LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

1>Z4^1 

®|ap ©opgwgftt fc 

Shelf ,-3^4 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



I* 



THE 



NEW BIOLOGY 



-OR- 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF LIFE 



-BY- 



<$& 



M. J. BARNETT, 



AUTHOR OF " PRACTICAL METAPHYSICS, OR THE TRUE METHOD OF 

HEALING," "HEALTH FOR TEACHERS," "JUSTICE 

A HEALING POWER," &c. 




BOSTON: 

B, H. CARTER & KARRICK, 

No. 3 BEACON STREET. 

1888. 




<l 



COPYRIGHT, X888, 

By M. J. BARNETT 
All Rights Reserved, 



Wallace Printing Co., St. Albans, Vt. 



^ 



•M 





CONTENTS. 








PAGE. 


Preface, ...--. 


5 


i. 


The Old and The New, 


9 


2. 


The Present and The Future, 


20 


3 


The Law, 


3 1 


4 


Correspondences in Diseases, 


40 


5- 


Correspondences in Accidents, - 


- 56 


6 


Independence, - - • - 


69 


7 


Failure and Success, 


83 


8. 


Old Age, - 


98 


9 


. Good and Evil, ... 


- "7 


IO 


. The Universality of the Science, - 


i37 



PREFACE. 



Whatever is new is also old. We speak of new 
foliage on the tree in spring-time, although we are 
well aw r are that the germ, the soul of that foliage 
is always alive within the tree, and that it only man- 
ifests itself at certain seasons. We know that dur- 
ing the season of rest it is just as much alive as 
during the season of activity, and that it is as old 
as the tree itself. 

All truth in man is coeval with man, and only 
outwardly manifests itself at certain due and di- 
vinely appointed seasons. Were it not already 
within it could not become manifest without. 

Although the truth is always within us as the 
germ of the foliage is within the tree, and will like 
that foliage become manifest at certain divinely ap- 
pointed seasons, yet, as it is for us to tend and 
nourish the tree that the foliage may be more flour- 



g PREFACE. 

ishing and abundant, so it is for us to foster and 
develop the truth that is in us, that it may yield us 
richer results. 

The season for manifesting the truth that is in 
us may have already arrived, but if we do not co- 
operate with divine intention, and work in favor of 
this manifestation, our foliage, though it may 
appear, will be sparse and sickly. 

It does not matter if this foliage reappears with 
certain changes of form and color. Truth may be 
all the more acceptable for its varying manifesta- 
tions, and may thereby attract more attention from 
those who have become almost unconscious of its 
existence. 

If we give an old truth a new dress, we do so, 
only as a courteous plucking of the robes of the 
passer-by. We would not mislead, but would only 
awaken the mind to a consciousness of ever-pres- 
ent truth, which from its very familiarity has 
ceased to make any impression. 

Let us go back in imagination to the days of 
Saxon-English. A mother cries out to her children 
to come to the window and see an omnibus. "An 
omnibus ! " they echo, trying for the first time to 
mouth the new Latin word, and leaving their play 



PREFACE. 7 

to see what manner of thing it is. "What big 
wheels it has!" they cry. "How strong it is!" 
"How many people it holds !" But suddenly rec- 
ognizing the familiar object, they say, perhaps with a 
shade of contempt, "Why it is only a carryall ! " 
But then, I never noticed that it had such great 
springs, and such handsome red wheels, and such a 
nice top for trunks and boxes." So they continue 
to note its peculiarities and descant upon them, and 
all because it has received a new name. 

Such children are we. We need rousing up to 
a new view of old familiar truth. 



CHAPTER I, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 



In the old biology of our day, great attention is 
paid to all the external manifestations of life as 
exhibited in motion and force. The more material 
of the savants will say that matter generates its 
own life, while those whose spiritual perceptions 
are more awakened will feel that all life manifested 
through matter, proceeds from spirit. But very 
few of either class seem to realize that from what- 
ever source this life force proceeds, they, them- 
selves are its masters. They fail to regard them- 
selves as the engineers of this great motive power- 
In the new biology, or the true science of life, 
which is to-day being presented to us under so 
many aspects, we are given to understand that we 
are in charge over this motive power as manifested 

(9) 



\ 



IO THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

both in ourselves and in the world around us. 
We are the engineers whose duty it is to see to it 
that a due supply of force is obtained and rightly 
directed so that the working of life's machinery 
may accomplish its preordained end. 

What would be thought of an engineer who 
apologized for the feeble and inefficient working 
of his machinery, by saying that his steam gave 
out? 

Would he not be told that it was for him to see 
to it that he had a due supply of steam and also 
that it was rightly directed instead of being al- 
lowed to escape to no purpose ? 

If we lack the life force, which is ever at our 
command, the lack is in ourselves, and should not 
be attributed to anything outside of ourselves. 

In the true science of life, we must look through 
and beyond the outward manifestation of life as 
visible in the material body, to the working of 
spirit within, to that workshop of all that is visible 
in us externally. We must not be startled at what 
appears to us a new way of regarding things. We 
must not feel that our old way of thinking is nec- 
essarily the best w&y, for a new way is quite likely 
to be an advance on an old way. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 1 

Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar 
of salt. Turning away from the new and looking 
back upon the old is a petrifying process, and its 
effect upon us is well symbolized by a pillar of 
salt. 

Throwing a false glamor upon the past and un- 
derrating the present, is a stumbling block in the 
way of progress. It deters one from fully appre- 
ciating and utilizing the present. 

That expression often uttered with a sigh, " The 
good old days," casts a reflection upon the present. 
It implies that yesterdays are better than to-days, 
which is a great mistake. To-day is better than 
yesterday, and to-morrow will be better than to- 
day. In ascending the spiral of inevitable progress 
from age to age, we gain a view of what is best by 
looking forward and upward, instead of backward 
and downward. 

The world and its inhabitants are further advanced 
to-day than ever they have been before within 
historic ages. There are always certain individ- 
uals who are remarkably in advance of their 
race. There have also been ages in the past, in 
which certain races have been remarkably devel- 
oped in some one direction. They have perhaps 



12 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

been far beyond us in certain arts and sciences, 
but as a whole they have not been so developed, 
so near a perfect comprehension of the truth and 
intention of being as we in this later day. 

Some old nations possessed an almost per- 
fected knowledge of material things, which has 
seemed to die with them, but have we reason to 
believe that they had passed through their mate- 
rial development and stepped up on to a spiritual 
plane above our present one ? 

The ancient Pompeians may have possessed the 
secret of exquisite and durable colors, but were 
they able to color their lives with that spirituality 
which would give the very highest prosperity ? 

The Grecians of old may have reached a high 
intellectual culture, they may have excelled us in 
the plastic and other arts, but did they possess that 
knowledge of spiritual things, which alone ensures 
continued prosperity? Have we any reason to 
suppose that they had as a whole passed our point 
of progress ? 

One, as a child of ten years may be able to spin 
a top or fly a kite more dexterously than as a man 
of forty, but would we consider that the individual 
had therefore retrograded instead of advanced ? 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 3 

We are all on our way through matter to pure 
spirit, and, like the earth in its diurnal journey, we 
are not at any one time flooded with light upon 
our whole being, but receive it upon one little part 
after another until our material day is consum- 
mated. 

Further back than any people of which we feel 
that we possess accurate knowledge, we can imag- 
ine races much more spiritual than we ; but if they 
had not passed through a certain material experi- 
ence, were they more advanced than we ? An in- 
fant may be more innocent than an adult, but is he 
therefore more advanced ? Is not innocence more 
valuable when it is coupled with knowledge ? Do 
we consider a human being, however innocent he 
may be, further advanced with one year of this life 
than with fifty ? 

Why are we prone to think the past better than 
the present? We forget the evil and remember 
only the good of the past. We forget the flaws 
and remember only the beauties. In accordance 
with a benificent law of our being, having no use 
for evil, it drops away from us as we pass along. 

Whether we remember it or not the good of the 



14 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

past is all with us, and we are increasing its store 
by our daily addition to it. 

Why should any one imagine that in a new dis- 
pensation, we are deprived of some of the good 
of the old dispensation ? In a new illumination of 
our minds with spiritual truth, the old good is only 
supplemented with a new good that is as much 
better and as much richer as we are able to receive. 

Why should it be thought that we, in the pres- 
ent day, are deprived of certain spiritual advanta- 
ges that were enjoyed in ages gone by ? We are 
never deprived of any spiritual good that has once 
been given us. What is once ours as property of 
the soul, is ours forever, and ours to increase and 
not decrease. If we let it remain latent within us, 
to our own undoing, instead of being bereaved 
we are only guilty. 

It is frequently said that eighteen hundred years 
ago there was bestowed upon the world a knowl- 
edge of the power that could work miracles in the 
way of moral and physical reformation ; but that it 
was a power peculiarly the property of that age 
and not intended for us at the present day. 

We are not able to see that Jesus, either by pre- 
cept or example, ever intimated anything of the 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 5 

kind. He taught his disciples how to do mar- 
velous work and told them that they should do 
greater work than he did. We think that his 
promises to twelve of his disciples are intended 
for all of his disciples throughout all time, and are 
not all who follow his teachings his disciples? 
Our work may not be greater in kind, but it can 
be greater in extent. If a man gives a certain 
kind of knowledge to a whole country, he is said 
to be doing a greater work than if he gave it only 
to a few individuals. The truth that Jesus shed 
upon a few we can shed upon many. If his fol- 
lowers of eighteen hundred years ago could so 
harmonize themselves with divine law as to become 
a healing power to others, why should not we in 
this age, be able to do likewise ? Are we to suffer 
loss from the fact of coming into the world at a 
more advanced period of its course ? It does not 
seem rational to suppose so. 

The distinctions made by Jesus in adopting the 
law were never between the new and the old, but 
between the true and the false. He adhered to 
the portions of the old law that were in accordance 
with truth, and rejected those that were false. He 
never revered the law because it was old, and he 



1 6 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

never set it aside because it was new. He sifted 
the old law and used the wheat and threw away 
the chaff. 

He endeavored to replace the old Jewish con- 
ception of a God capable of jealousy and anger, 
for the higher conception of a Divine Parent all 
love and wisdom. He accepted the decalogue, 
old though it was, but endeavored to give it a 
richer and fuller meaning. He taught that not 
only he who killed, but he who was angry with his 
brother, should be in danger of the judgment ; that 
instead of performing unto the Lord our oaths we 
are not to swear at all ; that instead of an eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we are to resist not 
evil ; that instead of loving our neighbor and hating 
our enemy, we are to love even our enemy. 
Wherein the old law was false, he contradicted it ; 
wherein it was limited he extended it ; wherein it 
was just and true he enjoined it upon his disciples, 
at the same time shedding upon it such light as 
disclosed to their vision a more interior and spirit- 
ual meaning within the too-revered letter of its 
truth. 

All the teaching that Jesus, during his sojourn 
on earth, gave to the world, belongs to us to-day. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. IJ 

If we do not seem to have it, it is because we have 
mislaid it. If we do not know how to apply it to 
our lives and make it practical, it is because our 
powers in that direction have fcecome crippled with 
disuse. The teaching of Jesus, being the pure 
essence of truth, was intended for all time. When 
we are capable of receiving an addition to that 
teaching, it will be given us. 

There is no reason why the marvelous works of 
moral and physical reformation that have been per- 
formed in the past, should not with the same con- 
ditions, be performed by us to-day. There is no 
reason why the same conditions should not be com- 
manded by us as perfectly as they have been com- 
manded by others in the past. 

We have conclusive proof of our powers to-day 
in the demonstrations that are constantly taking 
place all around us. Moreover we are each one 
of us capable of furnishing demonstrations for our- 
selves and in ourselves. Whatever powers for 
good we are in possession of, are powers intended 
for us to use. Whatever good we can accomplish 
by these powers, is a good intended to be accom- 
plished. God created none of our faculties in 
vain. 



1 8 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

It is a law in all progress, both spiritual and ma- 
terial, that we lose nothing good on our way up- 
ward, but only add new good to the old. 

In what is usually termed nature, that is God 
manifest in matter, we see that the vegetable king- 
dom possesses all that is contained in the mineral 
kingdom with new developments of its own ; and 
still further that any one vegetable contains many 
minerals. So the animal kingdom contains all of 
the vegetable kingdom, with new developments of 
its own ; and still further, any one animal contains 
a combination of vegetable elements. When we 
behold that high spiritual manifestation called the 
human mind, we find that it contains all there is in 
the material world with vastly more in addition. 
Every mineral, every vegetable, and every animal 
is in the mind of man, and not only in man as 
a whole, but in each individual man. In the mind 
of every human being is also the mind or instinct 
of every animal. Each animal is endowed with 
one characteristic mental trait; but in man, are, 
either latent or developed, all mental traits. He 
has within him the courage of the lion, the meek- 
ness of the lamb, the fidelity of the dog, the in- 
dustry of the ant, and the ingenuity of the bee. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 9 

Nothing good is ever dropped out or lost on the 
way, in the universal grand march of progression, 
and every spiritual entity as well as every material 
manifestation has set out upon this march, and in 
spite of their little temporary backslidings and their 
seasons of rest, they are ever going forward and 
upward. 

The new good, that we pick up along the way, 
is only an addition to the old, which is always ours, 
with just as much more as we are able to carry. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. 



To-morrow is higher up on the spiral of ad- 
vancement than to-day. Although to-morrow may 
be more full of opportunities than to-day, still, our 
to-morrow depends upon the use we make of to- 
day. 

If a child educated in an institution that has 
risen from an a-b-c school to an incorporated and 
chartered college, fails to learn therein anything 
more than his alphabet, he reaps no benefit from 
the advance of the institution. It is only his indi- 
vidual work that can benefit him. 

If we, in a more spiritual age of the world, fail 
to rise up out of a material condition, we receive 
no benefit from the world's advance. If we would 
(20) 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 21 

be advanced in the future, we must advance our- 
selves in the present. 

To-day we sow for to-morrow's reaping. The 
present is the all important time. It is the only 
time that is within our grasp. It is the only time 
that is at our disposal. 

It seems a grave error in any system of philos- 
ophy or religion, to lament this mortal life which is 
now ours, to regard it only as an affliction to be 
endured, with resignation, and to feel that all hap- 
piness lies in the future. Our future happiness 
depends upon our present condition of harmony 
with divine law. 

There is much cant in the various religious sects 
of the day to the mistaken purport that the sooner 
we are taken out of this life the better it is for us, 
as though God had made a mistake in placing us 
here. Thousands among the ignorant are encour- 
aged in this morbid sentimentality, by the fervid 
hymns that extol the by and by as though it were a 
blessed escape from the inevitable miseries of the 
present life. 

It is a curious fact that it is principally among 
devout Christians that we find this mistaken view 
of life. It is they who seem to think that the 



22 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

sooner God repairs his blunder in placing us here, 
the better it will be for us. We fail to discover 
any such view, in the teachings of their professed 
master and Christ. They seem to think that all 
unhappiness resides in their bodies. We even 
know of a certain theologian of note, who asserts 
that sin is of the body, and when we drop the body 
we shall come into purity and happiness. 

Sin no more resides in the body than it resides 
in the clothing, and one is free from sin no more 
because he has cast off his body, than because he 
has cast off his clothing. 

One may sin in order to pamper his body, as he 
may sin to decorate his clothing, but the sin is in 
his spirit, his mind. 

Suppose, for illustration, that a father so mistak- 
enly loved his son that he committed crime in order 
to lavish luxuries upon him, but that when the son 
died he ceased his criminal practices because there 
was no longer a motive for them. Should you 
consider that this man became suddenly virtuous 
because he lost his child? Without a change in 
his interior condition, would he not, with sufficient 
incentive, be ready to return to his crimes ? 

The wrong, the evil was in the fathers mind, 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 23 

and remained there, whether quiescent or active, 
until overcome and driven forth. 

Now, our body is our child, whom we so mis- 
takenly love, that we are ready to commit wrong 
for its sake. But the wrong, the evil is in our own 
spirit and mind, which we carry with us when we 
leave our body behind. 

" As the tree falls so shall it lie." We, however, 
do not suppose that as the tree falls so shall it lie 
forever. The condition in which we leave this 
mortal life shall be our condition on our arrival in 
the spiritual world, though we do not feel that we 
need remain in that condition forever. But is it 
not rational to suppose that we will remain in that 
condition until we desire to rise up out of it into 
something better ? 

Casting off the body, like casting off the cloth- 
ing may give us more freedom of action, but it 
cannot at once work a change in our interior con- 
dition. Without the body precisely as with the 
body, we can reap only the fruits of our spiritual 
condition. 

There is just as much loving wisdom in that part 
of God's plan which places us in this material world 
as in that part which takes us out of this world in- 



24 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

to the kingdom of pure spirit. The world's latest 
and greatest teacher has told us that the kingdom 
of heaven is within us. We can live in that king- 
dom now without waiting to drop our bodies. If 
we were living wholly in that kingdom we would 
be so in harmony with our material surroundings 
that we would have no desire to sentimentalize 
over getting rid of them. We would be able to 
perceive that this life was intended for our happy 
school days to prepare us for something higher. 
Our bodies reflecting the harmony of our minds 
would be for us the perfect tools they were in- 
tended to be, and so beautifully adapted for our 
use that they would afford us only pleasure. 

If our bodies are a burden to us, there is some- 
thing wrong with that higher part of us, which 
has charge of these bodies. Instead of lament- 
ing that our body is a hindrance to us, let us 
lament and overcome our errors and then our 
bodies will not obtrude themselves unpleasantly 
upon our notice. 

The material body of man is no more to be 
despised than any other material thing. On the 
contrary, it is the most wonderful, the noblest of 
God's material manifestations. When it was ere- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 2$ 

ated it was good, like all God's works, and if we 
have misused it and it has become bad, the fault 
is ours. 

While we speak of some who underrate the 
things of this material life, we know there are 
many more who so overrate them, that they think 
this life is the all in all. 

It is astonishing to see a person of perhaps ad- 
vanced age, manifest no interest whatever in the 
immortal part of his nature. He may fully be- 
lieve that in less than ten years he will surely be 
called to live in a spiritual realm, a kingdom in 
which material things have no place, yet his whole 
interest continues to be absorbed in these mate- 
rial things. The things of the spirit, which will 
so soon be forced upon him, fail to seem of any 
importance to him. 

What would be thought of a business man 
shortly to be established in a foreign city, who 
took no trouble to learn anything of the language 
or customs of the people among whom he was 
soon to dwell, and who, if he chanced to be 
where valuable information concerning them was 
being imparted, would, instead of listening, turn 
indifferently away. 



26 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

His attitude would doubtless be considered an 
unaccountably foolish one. Yet how much more 
foolish is the attitude of a person, who permits 
himself to enter into the spiritual world, a stranger 
in a strange land ; knowing nothing of even the 
alphabet of the new language by which alone he 
can hold communion with his fellow beings. 

As soon as our thoughts aud interests are upon 
spiritual things, we are living in the spiritual 
world. When we begin to unfold the spiritual 
part of us, when we begin to develop this only 
real, lasting part of us, we are learning the lan- 
guage of the country to which we are going, and 
if at any moment we are called upon to embark 
for it, we may feel sure that we shall there find 
ourselves at home. 

How much better and wiser it is for us to enter 
into the spiritual world now, instead of waiting 
until we are forced into it by dropping our mate- 
rial bodies, or, what would better express it, in- 
stead of waiting to pass into a realm, where all is 
spirit, while our minds can conceive of only mat- 
ter, and we are therefore left without anything. 

The folly of not being interested in spiritual 
things while in this life, would seem sufficiently 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 27 

great if the future alone were involved. But 
when we learn that one who refuses to enter into 
the kingdom of heaven that is within him, while 
he still has his material body, deprives himself 
also of present happiness and injures the very 
body he adores, we feel that his folly approaches 
idiocy. 

Even if a man loves only material things, it is 
but the part of wisdom so to rule his spirit and 
mind that these material things may afford him 
the utmost enjoyment. " Blessed are the meek 
for they shall inherit the earth." It is only those 
who maintain a lowly and correct attitude of mind 
who can command the fullest enjoyment of the 
things of earth. 

Ruling the lower nature with the higher to gain 
material enjoyment is certainly not working from 
the highest motive ; but the practice of good be- 
gets a love of good. When we once love good 
we will seek it for its own sake, and our happiness 
will reside in the good rather than in any minor 
benefit it confers upon us. 

For illustration, we can easily understand that 
a man in an inverted condition of mind may, in 
beginning to seek money, desire it only for the 



28 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

happiness he falsely supposes it will bring him ; 
but in his eager pursuit he shortly loses sight of 
the end, and finally loves money for itself alone. 

Now, the same law that works in our downward 
inclination, works also in our upward growth. 
When we pursue good with even an oblique mo- 
tive, we will end in loving good for itself, which 
is the true motive. 

When we look within ourselves for our spirit- 
ual nature, even though we may do so only for the 
repairing of our bodies, we shall be likely to catch 
at least a glimpse of it. As soon as we desire to 
unfold that real part of our being, we shall be so 
aided in our endeavor, that we shall be enabled to 
succeed. 

A sincere desire for any good is always an en- 
ergy set to work to accomplish that good. It is a 
cry to all the powers of good for aid, to which 
there is always a helpful response. Let us have 
this desire, let us utter this cry at once. Now is 
the day of Salvation. We are not to work with 
a view to saving ourselves in the hereafter, but 
with a view to saving ourselves in the present, or 
rather with no view to self at all, but with only 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 29 

a view to harmony with divine purpose, and the 
result will be immediate salvation. 

It is to the evils that are holding us in bondage 
to-day that our efforts are to be directed. The 
future will take care of itself. 

We need not trouble ourselves about what is 
going to be our condition when we cast off our 
bodies, for our condition will then be just what we 
are making it now while we have possession of 
our bodies. 

There is no death for anything except evil, ana 
the evil that is in us does not die until we kill it. 

If you morbidly imagine that the evils in your 
mind, which are so reflected in your material body 
as to make it a burden to you, will suddenly drop 
away from you with that body, you will, we fear, 
be wofully disappointed on reaching your future 
home. Your evils are no more destroyed with 
the disintegration of your material body, than your 
body is destroyed with the breaking of a mirror 
that reflects it. 

Even when the harvest time comes we cannot 
reap what we have not sown. 

Instead of underrating this material life, let us 
feel that it is a perfect instrument, wisely and lov- 



30 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

ingly adapted for our use and enjoyment. Let 
us also thank God that it is so sure an indication 
of our interior condition, that however spiritually- 
blind we may be, we yet can always, with our ma- 
terial eyes, behold in these bodies the external 
manifestation of our every inward error, and can 
thereby become enabled to free ourselves from 
bondage. 

This material life should be one grand unbroken 
harmony, even though at times in a minor key. 

This material body should be a musical instru- 
ment perfectly attuned to the harmonies of this 
life. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE LAW. 



Spiritual science enjoins upon us the necessity 
of harmonizing ourselves with the law. To what 
law does it refer? It refers to the universal law 
of God, the divinely established order that governs 
the universe, the fixed relation between cause and 
sequence. 

We speak of Gods law as one law, in the same 
way that we speak of civil law as one, though we 
well know that divine law, like civil law, is an ag- 
gregation of many laws. 

The term inexorable law, has to many of us a 
harsh sound. We fail to discover tenderness in a 
Divine Parent, who does not modify his law in re- 
sponse to our entreaties and our supposed neces- 
sities. This limited and ignorant view of divine 

(31) 



32 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

order .leads us to feel that we are so restricted that 
we have no free will. But within the circle of 
necessity, the great circle of God's law, is always 
the smaller circle of man's free will, and within 
that smaller circle is all the freedom that man is 
capable of enjoying. 

If we are wise and upright in spirit, we will not 
struggle against the law ; we will so harmonize our- 
selves with it, that, instead of finding it bondage, 
we shall discover it to be the utmost freedom. 

Which man enjoys the most freedom, he who 
pursues an unlawful course and devotes his best 
energies to dodging the civil law, whose penalties 
he must finally experience, or he who devotes his 
energies wholly to good and thereby becomes so 
harmonious that he is scarcely conscious of the 
existence of law ? The former course is slavery ; 
the latter, freedom. 

The laws that govern the material world are 
called physical laws, or natural laws ; but the laws 
that govern pure spirit are just as natural, just as 
much born of God, as the laws that govern matter. 
In reality all law is spiritual, whether it governs mat- 
ter or pure spirit. It is just as natural to love our 
fellow beings, as it is to inhale air into our lungs, 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 33 

yet one is a spiritual, and the other is a physical 
act. But the power that makes the physical act 
possible, is a spiritual power. All adjustment of 
cause and sequence is an outcome of spirit, of 
mind. Even civil law is an outcome of the minds 
of those who ordain it. 

We none of us think of contradicting or strug- 
gling- against so-called physical law ; we harmonize 
ourselves with it. We do not try to prevent the 
wind from blowing, but we spread open the sails 
of our ships that it may aid us in our commerce, 
and when it rises into a tempest we study to avoid 
disaster by protecting ourselves against it. We 
do not struggle against the law of the solar system 
that governs the order of day and night ; we simply 
adjust ourselves to it. 

What would be the prosperity of a farmer who 
struggled against the inevitable course of nature 
in the order of the seasons, who determinedly 
planted his seed in the autumn and stubbornly ex- 
pected to reap hi£ harvest in the spring-time ? 

It is just as great folly to resist spiritual law as 
it would be to resist physical law. The law which 
ordains that suffering and disease shall follow upon 
sin and error, is just as fixed, just as inexorable as 



34 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

the law which ordains that aarkness shall follow 
upon the turning away of the earth from the sun, 

The one law we are able to see clearly ; the other 
we do not perceive. Why is this ? It is because 
our spiritual perception, which is required in order 
to see spiritual things, is not yet unfolded. 

Spiritual science is a knowledge of law as gov- 
erning in the realm of spirit, and through spirit 
descending into the realm of matter. 

True spiritual science is never coercion. It is 
simply loving conviction. It explains the working 
of divine law, but never enforces arbitrary person- 
al law. It never forces aw r ay error. It never 
commands us to drop beliefs, however false they 
may be, for as soon as we come into knowledge 
our false beliefs, our erroneous creeds, and our 
mistaken views of the science of life, become dis- 
sapated as naturally and as easily as the shadows 
of a dimly-lighted room disappear upon the intro- 
duction of light. Before we have the light in the 
room we confound the shadows w r ith the objects ; 
so when we are benighted, we confound error with 
truth, and then we hold fast to the error. True 
science will not strive to take away our creeds, for 
so long as they comfort us and we hold fast to 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 35 

them, we need them however erroneous they may 
be. They are sure to have some good in them. 

If you take away a lame man's crutch before he 
has anything to replace it, he will fall. He needs 
his crutch until he finds something greater than a 
crutch. True science will offer him that something 
greater, but will not expect him to take it in the 
place of his crutch, until he sees for himself that 
it is greater, and when he does see this, he will 
throw it aside without a pang. Our beliefs, false 
though they may be, cannot be wrenched away 
from us ; but when we rise above their level, we 
simply come up out of them, and leave them be- 
hind without a pang. 

True spiritual science does not attempt to en- 
force any human law ; it merely teaches the work- 
ing of divine law. It teaches us to have divine 
patience with ignorance and error, for we have, 
none of us as yet, come into all knowledge. It 
takes no thought of nationality or of sect, but is 
so broad that it opens its doors to every spiritual 
being. 

The teachings of this science are intended so to 
help us unfold our spiritual powers, that, instead 
of accepting its truths blindly, we are able to dis- 



36 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

cover them for ourselves, and no truth is ever ours 
until we have discovered it for ourselves. It is by 
our own spiritual apprehension that we must seize 
upon truth. It is by our own spiritual powers that 
we must assimilate truth. The workings of the law 
can be pointed out to us, but we cannot fully accept 
them as truths until we have, to some degree, 
demonstrated them upon ourselves and others. 

A blind man may believe there is such a thing 
as color, but color is not real to him until he can 
see it for himself. Spiritual science works upon 
the spiritual vision in order that we may perceive 
its truths by making them real to ourselves. Spir- 
itual science opens the eyes of the blind. 

We cannot change the law, and could we see 
clearly the beneficent intention in the very penalty 
of error, we would not even wish to change it. 
We would simply desire to change ourselves in our 
relation to it, and then our error would be changed 
to right thinking, the result of which would be 
happiness instead of pain. 

A citizen does not feel that he is in a safe and 
protected condition until he knows something of 
the laws of the country in which he lives, and when 
he learns the laws he feels the necessity of har- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 37 

monizing himself with them. If he learns that his 
residence within city limits must be built of brick 
or stone, he does not every year atteftipt to put up 
a wooden structure, and every year complainingly 
see it razed to the ground by order of the city au- 
thorities. He simply conforms to the existing law, 
which he cannot alter, and which, with sufficient 
insight into its intention, he discovers to be a be- 
neficent law. 

Why do we not pursue the same rational course 
in regard to divine law ? We fail to realize the im- 
portance of placing ourselves in a safe and pro- 
tected spiritual condition. We fail to realize that 
we have anything to do with our spiritual condi- 
tion. We seem to consider ourselves in the hands 
of either a blind fate or an arbitrary ruler with 
whom it is useless for us to contend. We do not 
need to contend with the law or with the divine 
ordainer of the law, or with anything but the evil 
and ignorance within ourselves. 

While we cannot alter the law, we can and must 
learn the law. There are two ways of learning the 
law ; one through suffering and disease born of sin 
and error ; and the other, through that peace which 
follows observance of the law, overcoming the 



38 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

world, rising up out of the bondage of material 
things. We can learn the law by defying it, or by 
complying with it. Which of these two ways shall 
we choose? It is only a mistaken and blinding 
love of self that leads us to choose the hard way, 
for the way of the transgressor is hard. Still, 
those who will not, or as yet cannot come into 
knowledge through harmony, must come into it 
through discord. The time always comes when 
discords resolve themselves into harmonies. There 
are always some in our midst who must have their 
discords, but it is our work to resolve these dis- 
cords into harmonies for them. 

Jesus tells us that the poor we always have with 
us. We shall always have with us those who are 
spiritually poor, as well as those who are materially 
poor. Poverty is a comparative term. We are all 
of us comparatively poor in spiritual possessions. 
While there are many at this moment, who are 
poorer than we, there are also countless beings in 
higher spheres, who have infinitely more of these 
spiritual possessions than the richest of us. So 
long as God's children are in different stages of 
their unfoldment, just so long there will be those 
of the same generation, of the same race, and 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 39 

even of the same family, who are rich, and those 
who are poor in spiritual things. But let us, in- 
stead of glorying in our own acquisitions, only en- 
deavor to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. 
Let us shed the same love and tenderness on those 
who are behind us upon the road, as on those who 
are in advance of us. Let us follow the example of 
our Master and teach the law in all love and char- 
ity. Let us unceasingly pass on to others the 
little we may have learned of this divine jurispru- 
dence. Let us feel that while suffering and disease 
are a necessity to those who are in a condition to 
have them, yet it is our bounden duty to endeavor 
to abolish that necessity by bringing them up into 
a better condition. Let us by teaching the loving 
purpose of the law bring about that harmony which 
offers the only freedom from suffering and disease. 



CHAPTER IV. 



CORRESPONDENCES IN DISEASES. 



The material world is created by the spiritual 
world, and corresponds to it, as the shadow corre- 
sponds to the object that casts the shadow. 

Sweedenborg says that the whole natural world 
corresponds to the spiritual world, and not only the 
natural world in general, but also in every partic- 
ular. 

The interior part of a man constitutes his spirit- 
ual world, and it corresponds to his exterior or his 
material world. 

This truth forms the basis of all spiritual heal- 
ing, which is the healing of the material body by 
first healing the spiritual part of us, which domi- 
nates that body, and to which the ce dition of that 

body must inevitably correspond. 
(40) 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 4 1 

Nations that are aggressive and warlike in spirit, 
will devote their best energies to the invention and 
construction of implements of war, and they will 
furnish and surround themselves with these imple- 
ments. Their material surroundings will corre- 
spond to their spiritual condition. A simple people 
with a peaceful and home-loving spirit will engage 
in peaceful and quiet occupations, such as agricul- 
ture and the mechanic arts. A nation that is more 
aspiring in mind will engage in the fine arts ; while 
one still more developed intellectually and spirit- 
ually will find their highest pleasure in the study 
of philosophy, ethics and religion, and the practice 
of good. 

As it is of nations, so it is of individuals, what- 
ever love or desire holds possession of the mind, 
gives form and color to the material condition, 
which is only a pushing out of the mind into exter- 
nals. 

These externals are sometimes said to be of no 
importance, and in many cases are denied an exis- 
tence. Although they are the most outward effect 
of the working of the mind, the grossest and most 
transient of manifestations yet they have their uses. 



42 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

They are an index of the controlling mind or minds 
that produce them. 

We do not despise a thermometer because it 
cannot produce heat or cold ; but we value it as an 
index of temperature. 

In the science of spiritual healing, the condition 
of the material body is important to us as an index 
of the mind or minds that brought about that con- 
dition. 

The material body corresponds, not only in a 
general way to its dominating mind, but as Swee- 
denborg says of the material world iip its relation 
to the spiritual world, it corresponds also in every 
particular, whether we are always able to trace this 
correspondence or not. 

It is said in material science that each organ of 
the brain dominates a corresponding part of the 
body. But as the brain is itself only a material 
part, it cannot dominate any other material part. 
We would say that certain attributes of mind, 
working through its direct and most sensitive 
medium, the brain, act upon certain corresponding 
parts of the rest of the physical organism. 

We all know that the affections act upon the 
heart, and to say that one who is sorrowful is heavy 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 43 

hearted, is not a mere figure of speech, but a lit- 
eral truth, for his heart, at such times, performs its 
functions in a slow and labored manner. One who 
is joyful, is said, with equal truth, to have a light 
heart, a heart that briskly performs its functions 

It has been noticed that the intellect acts upon 
the lungs. 

The memory seems to be connected with the 
digestive organs. When the mind receives a great 
deal that it cannot digest or assimilate, and there- 
fore cannot retain, the digestive organs will be 
quite likely to be taxed by food that they cannot 
utilize. 

When the mind is so inharmonious that it can- 
not throw off harmful or useless conditions, when 
it clings to its errors, the excretory organs will be 
found unable to perform their functions in throw- 
ing off harmful or useless material from the physi- 
cal body. 

The organ of hope, for example, is said to pre- 
side over the liver. Melancholy, which is inverted 
hope, causes the liver to be slothful in the perform- 
ance of its duty. 

Caution is said to preside over the ear. An 
acuteness to perceive coming danger and to pro- 



44 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

vide against it, will manifest itself physically in 
acute hearing. The hare, the most cautious of 
animals, is also the most acute of hearing. He is 
not acute of hearing, because — as is sometimes 
said — of the favorable construction of his ear, but, 
on the contrary, his attribute of caution has cre- 
ated the peculiar construction of his ear. 

Not only man as a collective whole has his duty 
in life, but each man as a separate being has his 
special duty marked out for him. In like manner, 
not only the mind as a whole has its duty in rela- 
tion to the physical body, but each separate attri- 
bute of mind, has its special duty marked out. 
As one man cannot fail in his duty without affect- 
ing the whole brotherhood of man, so one attribute 
of mind cannot fail in its duty, without affecting 
the mind as a whole, and, through that mind affect- 
ing the physical body as a whole. It is this gen- 
eral demoralization, this sympathetic response of 
one part to the cry of another part, that renders it 
so difficult for us to trace the working of the law 
of correspondences. 

In searching, however, lor the special cause of a 
special ailment, we must go back through generals 
to particulars. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY, 45 

A particular ailment in the physical body, will, 
when rightly traced, be found to correspond to the 
particular cause in mind that created that ailment. 

You may think that as your ailment is heredi- 
tary, and was created by one of your ancestors, 
and does not correspond to any of your mental 
conditions, that you are not responsible for it. 
You are not, in this case, responsible for its crea- 
tion, but you are responsible for its perpetuation. 
If it has been brought to you, it is your work to 
reject it. If it has been put upon you, it is for you 
to destroy it. 

If you bought a defective piece of goods, would 
you consider that the merchant of whom you 
bought it, offered a legitimate excuse for selling 
the bad work, in saying that he did not make it ? 
No. You would feel that while he might not be 
responsible for the making of it, he certainly was 
responsible for receiving it, and for selling it, and 
that in doing so he was injuring himself and all 
with whom he had dealings. Just so it is with us 
concerning all bad work classed under the head of 
disease. We are fully responsible, not only for 
the ailments that we create ourselves, but also for 
those of another's creation, which we harbor to the 



46 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

injury of ourselves and of all others who come 
under our influence. 

In referring the law of correspondences to the 
creation of disease by mental conditions, spiritual 
science does not hold you responsible for the crea- 
tion of any disease that is put upon you by an- 
other ; and the correspondence is between the ail- 
ment and the creating cause, and not between the 
ailment and secondary cause in you, which is your 
ignorance or weakness in harboring the ailment. 

For illustration, your mother created consump- 
tion in herself, by yielding to a consuming grief. 
The grief in her mind produced a corresponding 
inharmony in her body. Now, your inherited ten- 
dency in that direction is fostered, not by grief at 
all, but only by ignorance of the possibility of rid- 
ding yourself of it, and by your constant fear of 
it, or the fear of those around you. 

It is well known in medical practice, that those 
who indulge in impure thoughts — which lead to 
impure acts — will reflect a corresponding impurity 
in their bodies in some eruptive and loathsome 
disease. It is also known that they who indulge 
in inflammatory thoughts, create inflammatory dis- 
eases in their bodies. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 47 

But there are a thousand and one ailments trace- 
able to their corresponding causes in mind, whose 
workings are so subtle, and so much in the realm 
of the unseen, that these causes are never discov- 
ered or even suspected by the practitioners, who 
direct their attention chiefly to externals. 

Sometimes a medical doctor is astonished and 
confounded at the persistence of an ailment, for 
whose existence, to say nothing of its continuance, 
there seems to be no cause. His research does not 
extend to the realm of causation, and the corre- 
spondence of the ailment to its cause in mind is 
perhaps so complex and subtle that only an adept 
in spiritual science could trace its working. 

If a man in a fit of rage bursts a blood vessel, 
even the most material doctor would trace the 
physical result back to a cause in mind, because 
the working of the law would be so immediate 
and so apparent. If a man should fall dead from 
sudden fright or sudden joy — of which there are 
numberless cases on record — every one would be 
ready to admit that he had been killed by a 
thought. 

For illustration, a poor old Italian woman, who 
had invested her last few pence in the Royal Lot- 



48 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

tery, when suddenly informed that she had won a 
fortune, fell dead at the feet of the messenger. 
The me enger did nothing to her body. The 
thought he transferred to her mind in the few words, 
— " Your numbers have won a thousand francs," 
— was too sudden and strong for her mind to bear, 
and the shock to her mind instantly extended to 
her physical body, and death was the result. 
Even the ignorant peasants that surrounded her 
were well aware that she had received her death 
blow through her mind. 

If we form the habit of tracing a bodily ailment 
back to the mind, whether we at once see any 
connection or not, we shall be able to discover, 
not only that it was created by a condition of 
mind, but also by a condition corresponding to 
the ailment. 

A young girl was suffering with that distress- 
ing malady called asthma. It was known that it 
was not hereditary with her, and as the girl had 
comfortable means, and, what is considered an 
easy life, and otherwise good health, there seemed 
to be no reason for the ailment. A change of 
climate gave her temporary relief, but of course 
effected no radical cure. How did she create 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 49 

such an ailment in herself? The healer, who took 
charge of her case, felt sure that there must be a 
corresponding condition of mind back of it, as a 
cause. She soon learned that the young girl, 
though living in the midst of agreeable people, 
even of her own age, was nevertheless very lone- 
ly, that her highest thoughts and warmest feelings 
were repressed. The best part of her nature was 
shut in and stifled, just as her lungs were stifled 
in breathing. The girl did not realize her mental 
condition until it was set before her in the new 
light of spiritual science, and then she saw no 
remedy for it. She was without a family tie and 
had no congenial friend. 

The healer of course ignored her difficulty in 
breathing. For it had indicated the real mala- 
dy and was of no further importance. Like 
a true soul physician she urged her to open her 
heart and her mind, and her breathing would take 
care of itself. She told her that there were thou- 
sands of her fellow beings, who were starving for 
just such good thoughts as she was repressing in 
her mind, and for just such rich affection as she 
was shutting up within her heart. She advised 
her not to wait for them to come to her, but to go 



50 THE NEW BIOLOGV. 

forth and seek them and not rest until she found 
them for they would be her remedy. She told 
her to begin without delay to utter aloud, even in 
the solitude of her room to the empty air around 
her her strongest thoughts and feelings, so as to 
give them forth, to express them outwardly, and 
they would be sure to reach some one and do 
good, which good would at ouce reflect upon her- 
self. 

The goung girl proceeded in accordance with 
the teaching of the healer, and the result was 
marvelous. As her mind opened, her lungs also 
opened, and she breathed freely. Her changed 
mental condition seemed to be reflected not only 
in her body, but in her circumstances. From a- 
mong those whom she had sought and ministered 
to, was a young girl of tastes similar to her own, 
in whom she found the congenial companion and 
friend for whom she had always longed. Her 
asthma became a thing of the past because its 
corresponding cause in mind had been discovered 
and destroyed. 

Now there are many other and more evil con- 
ditions of mind that might equally correspond 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 5 1 

with the asthma such as avarice or any intentional 
holding of good to one's self. 

A mother came in great distress of mind to a 
healer, with her child, a boy seven years old, to 
have him treated for an eruption upon his skin. 
She said that he had been troubled with the ail- 
ment from his birth, and no medical doctor had 
been able to do more than afford temporary relief, 
after which the ailment would break out worse 
than ever. There was no impure blood in her 
family, and she did not know how her child came 
by such a taint. 

The healer questioning the mother concerning 
the child's disposition and habits, learned that he 
had a violent temper in which he indulged on the 
slightest provocation, and that he seemed to have 
an affinity for profane and obscene language which 
he readily caught and remembered. 

The mother had never attempted to correct 
these evil habits in the child, because as she said, 
he was not to blame for them. They had been 
put upon him. During several months before his 
birth, she had been in the habit of sitting by an 
open window that overlooked a lumber yard, in 
which were employed some quarrelsome men who 



52 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

made use ot such profane and obscene language, 
that, at times she was obliged to close the window, 
preferring the air of a stifling room, to the greater 
annoyance of those harsh and angry voices. 

She was so mistaken that she thought she was 
dealing kindly by her child in not correcting in 
him a tendency to evil for which she did not con- 
sider him responsible. 

The healer at once undeceived her. She point- 
ed out to her the correspondence of the impuri- 
ties breaking out upon the child's skin to the im- 
purities in thought and language breaking forth 
from the child's mind. She gave her distinctly to 
understand, that so long as the creating evil re- 
mained in the child's mind, there was no system 
of medication that could purify the child's body. 

The healer treated the child for heredity. She 
also went still further back and treated the mother 
for the evil which she had permitted her mind to 
receive and to hand down to her child. She pic- 
tured the mother sitting by that open window in 
so calm and trustful a condition, with her thoughts 
so concentrated on comforting themes — on the 
beautiful possibilities of her child's life, and on 
the all-protecting power of spirit — that theturbu- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 53 

lent voices outside made no impression whatever 
upon her mind. 

The mother's mind being free from disturbance, 
no disturbing influence could gain access to the 
child. 

It is not that which is presented to the senses, 
but that which the mind receives and retains, that 
does the harm. 

The effect of the healer's earnest and persistent 
treatment was shortly manifested in the child. His 
eruptive temper disappeared and his bad language 
dropped away from him, consequently the poison 
which these evils had created in his blood was car- 
ried off in natural channels, and his skin became 
smooth and tinged with a healthful glow. 

We know of a lady who desires above all things 
to have money. She feels that every ill in her life 
is brought about by a lack of money. She regards 
money as the oil that so lubricates the machinery 
of life that with it nothing could possibly go amiss. 
When she lost her children she felt that if her 
means had permitted her to call in more skillful 
medical attendance, their lives would have been 
spared. 

A lack of money is the greatest cross she could 



54 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

have had come into her life, and it is just the cross 
that her own condition has brought upon her. 
There is nothing in the condition of her mind or 
spirit to attract or build up any better circumstances 
around her. 

You may say that all who have money are not 
spiritual. Certainly they are not. But those who 
have money are in a condition to attract money. 
There is something in their development that 
brings it to them, but it may mean happiness, or 
or it may mean misery to them, according to their 
condition. 

The lady to whom we refer, in her state of long- 
ing and discontent, has, as might be expected, no 
physical health. Instead, however, of discerning 
the cause of her decline, shs feels sure that if she 
had money enough to seek other climates and 
scenes, etc., her health would be perfect. 

Her ailments correspond to her mental condi- 
tion. There is a lack of nutrition in her system, 
she is thin and pale and her blood is poor, and 
until she discovers her spiritual poverty, she will, 
in all probability, keep her material poverty* 

Physical blindness corresponds to spiritual blind- 
ness. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 55 

Physical deafness corresponds to spiritual deaf- 
ness. 

If these ailments are hereditary with us, what 
we have to do to rid ourselves of them, is to 
conquer heredity. But if they are of our own 
creation, what we have to do to rid ourselves of 
them is to cultivate a willingness to see and to 
hear spiritual truth whenever and however it may 
be presented to us. 



CHAPTER V. 



CORRESPONDENCES IN ACCIDENTS. 



We think that the causes, not only of diseases, 
but also of so-called accidents, may be found in a 
condition of mind. 

As there are no accidents in spirit, no conditions 
of mind that come by chance, there could not well 
be chance in any of the material results of mental 
conditions. 

All the events of our lives — those whose causes 
we cannot discover, as well as those whose causes 
are clearly discernible to us — come to us through 
the working of law. There is no chance, there is 
only the working of law in what we call our acci- 
dents. 

If we hold ourselves in a harmonious condition 
of mind, we are not in a condition to bring acci- 
(56) 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 57 

dents upon ourselves, and we are not likely to 
meet with accidents. 

The mind of man presides over the material 
things that he presses into his service. We all 
know that material things serve us well in propor- 
tion to their adaptability for our needs and our 
proper use of them. They are adapted for our 
needs in proportion as there is mind, that is good 
thought, put into them ; and we use them properly 
in proportion as our mind is in so harmonious a 
condition that we have an unhindered use of the 
faculties brought to bear upon them. 

It is mind that adapts material things for our 
use, and it is mind that enables us to make the 
best use of them. 

We each have our days and our seasons in which 
material things do not serve us well, when we know 
that the material things themselves have under- 
gone no change whatever. The difference is in 
ourselves, in our condition of mind. 

A boy, for example, uses the same sharp knife 
that he has whittled with hundreds of times and 
never cut himself. But to-day, being in a disturb- 
ed condition of mind — perhaps from a feeling of 
rebellion or of disappointment — he does not bring 



58 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

to bear upon his work the calm and consequently 
best use of his faculties, and he cuts his finger. 
You say he has met with an accident. But is the 
occurrence a chance, a mere happening ? Does it 
not come through the working of law just as much 
as any other event of life ? Is not the cause of 
the boy's accident to be found in his own condition 
of mind ? If a horse turns into the wrong- street 
because the driver has dropped the reins, we do 
not feel that the occurrence was a mere chance, 
but we logically trace it back to the man's having 
resigned his command over the horse. So with 
the boy, when he cuts his finger his necessary fac- 
ulties are not in command over the knife. 

If we meet with accidents it is because we are 
in a condition of mind that renders us liable to 
them, and they will generally be found to be such 
special kinds of accidents as correspond to our 
special condition of mind, and moreover just such 
kinds of accidents as we require to help us to cor- 
rect that special condition of mind. They will be 
the natural results of the condition working for our 
good in the destruction of the condition. 

A lady sprained her ankle by walking so far 
on the outer edge of the sidewalk that her foot 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 59 

slipped off. She said that there was no reason for 
walking where she did, as no one was passing by, 
and that she never would have done so, if she had 
not that day, been in a wavering and foolish con- 
dition of mind, and that her feet, like her mind, 
were governed by no fixed purpose. 

One evening, a lady walking briskly along, fell 
flat upon the pavement, with no apparent reason 
for so doing, and seriously injured herself. She 
said that all that day she had been feeling defiant 
and self-asserting, and it seemed to her that in- 
stead of falling in a natural way, she had been 
dashed down to the ground by some outside pow r er. 
She was habitually defiant and self-asserting and 
had many times before in her life met with similar 
accidents. 

Another lady who had for days been in a defiant 
condition of mind that led her to be determined to 
pursue a certain course, whether right or wrong, 
started in a specially defiant moment down a flight 
of stairs over which she had been in the habit of 
passing many times daily, and pitched headlong 
from the top to the bottom. There seemed no 
more reason for her falling on that day, than on 



« 

60 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

any other day unless that reason was looked for in 
her condition of mind. 

A fall was just the sort of accident that her con- 
dition would render her liable to. It was also the 
most offensive accident that she in her self-assert- 
ing mood could have met with, and it was at the 
same time the most salutary one as it tended to 
correct in her the error of self-assertion. 

We think that one who is self-sufficient, or self- 
asserting, or self-opinionated is in just the condi- 
tion of mind that would expose his material body 
to a downfall. His trust is in himself and not in 
the only protecting power. While such an acci- 
dent would be the one most offensive to him, it 
would be the very kind to which he would be 
liable, and that he would need to raise him up into 
a higher condition. 

We think that one in a harmonious condition of 
mind, one with little thought of his own impor- 
tance, would not be likely to meet with an acci- 
dent in which he would be thrown to the earth, or 
if he did so, would not be likely to be injured. 

A man in that condition of mind that he felt 
himself standing loftly above his fellows, and who 
always managed to stride before others and be in 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 6 1 

the advance, met with an accident that resulted in 
a painful and so-called incurable lameness, which 
he believes will leave him all his life limping in the 
rear of his fellows. Spiritual science would tell 
him that his ailment is not incurable, but that when 
he traces its cause to a corresponding condition of 
mind, and corrects that condition, ail ill effects of 
his ailment will disappear, even though an acci- 
dent may have been its secondary cause. 

We, like nature, are able to recover from our 
accidents. We have only to seek and apply the 
true remedy. 

Can we not for further illustration of the work- 
ing of this law of correspondences, imagine a pugi- 
list, who considers his brawny arms the highest 
potency in the universe. After a special indul- 
gence in cruelty, in which all his better nature 
seems paralyzed, he is seized with paralysis of the 
right arm. Now the dead condition of his affec- 
tional nature has caused him no uneasiness what- 
ever, but the dead condition of his muscles makes 
an appeal to him that awakens his mind to a better 
condition. 

We know of a lady, w T ho, after meeting with dis- 
appointment after disappointment, cross after cross, 



62 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

pecuniary loss after loss, until it seemed that she 
could endure no more, had, as a culmination of 
her woes, part of her limited, and so-considered 
necessary wardrobe, stolen from her. Her friends 
saw only cruelty in the accident. But she has 
since told us that it was worth more than a fortune 
to her to lose those garments, because it gave her 
trust in God. 

Now it may be difficult for some of us to see 
how it would give us trust in God to meet with 
loss. 

But this lady, although she had in a certain way 
believed that whatever comes to us is the result of 
our own condition, and that we will be taken care 
of if we trust in the Infinite Spirit, yet she had 
allowed herself to be anxious and fearful con- 
cerning her affairs, and had not trusted in God, even 
when she knew that she was doing her best. The 
accident, which she felt to be the outcome of her 
own fearful condition, awakened her to a full reali- 
zation of the importance of trust. She knew that, 
as every one of our misfortunes has a lesson in it, 
she had only to seek and learn the lesson conveyed 
to her in her loss, and she did so. She learned 
that unless the Lord keeps the city the watchmen 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 63 

watch in vain. She learned that it is not fear and 
anxiety, but trust in the loving Father's care that 
protects us from even worldly adversaries. 

We have known of a number of persons whose 
trust has been in themselves and in material things, 
who have several times in their lives met with a 
serious loss by robbery, etc., of these very mate- 
rial things upon which they set an undue value. 
Now, like Shylock in Shakespeare's drama, they 
have been in just the condition to bring upon 
themselves such a loss as was more grievous to 
them than any other accident could have been, at 
the same time it was just the kind of accident that 
they needed to raise them to a higher level. 

I think we all feel that in order to appeal to 
Shylock to work a reformation of character it would 
be necessary to deprive him of his money which 
was his God. We all know that those who fear 
dishonesty and look for it, generally find it. Those 
who watch for thieves will attract them, and be 
rewarded for their diligence by finding them. 

Fear is a complete inversion of trust. It is a 
belief in the power of evil, in the supremacy of 
evil over good. 

Fear places us in that incompetent condition of 



64 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

mind in which we are playing into the hands of 
evil. 

A trapeze performer and a tight rope dancer 
know very well that without fear their footing is 
sure, but that the moment they fear they are lost, 
and all this with no change whatever in the mate- 
rial things with which they are dealing. A confi- 
dent condition of mind, in which they can com- 
mand their necessary faculties, is their only salva- 
tion. 

Fear of a certain evil attracts that evil to us. 
Not only the diseases we fear are likely to come to 
us, but the accidents we fear are just the ones to 
which we are most liable. 

We have known persons who were in constant 
fear of death by accident, who have at last met 
with such a death. Fear creates, encourages and 
attracts evil. 

It is easier to trace to our condition of mind our 
own personal accidents, than those public calami- 
ties for whose occurrence we seem in no way re- 
sponsible. 

We may, for example, be able to see that the 
breaking down of a bridge under a railroad train, 
is the result of a wrong condition of mind in those 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 65 

who have charge of the bridge and should see to 
it that it is kept in good repair ; but we are per- 
haps not able to see how we, who are only a pas- 
senger in the train, could trace our share in the 
accident to our condition of mind. 

Nevertheless we believe that one in an habitually 
trustful condition of mind, would, in some way, be 
protected from harm by accident even of another's 
creation. 

A man who, in crossing the railroad track vas- 
cilates before the coming train, turning first in one 
direction and then in another until it is too late and 
the engine is upon him, would not, if he were in a 
harmonious condition of mind, in the first place, 
be likely to cross a track until he knew that no 
train was near ; but, in the second place, even if 
he were in that respect in some way deceived, he 
would not, when he saw the train, be likely to be 
so overcome with fright that he could not com- 
mand his faculties. His well regulated mind would 
be likely to serve him well in the emergency, and 
with lightning speed he would fly in one direction 
and be saved. 

One whose soul rested in trust would, like the 
three holy Jews of old when cast into the fiery 



66 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

furnace, be delivered by the God in whom he 
trusted. He would, like Daniel, when cast into 
the den of lions, although exposed to the greatest 
danger, yet, on account of his condition be saved 
from harm. 

It is said that God sent his angel and shut the 
lions' mouths. Has not God his angels to-day just 
as much as ever he had, even if we do not see 
them ? Has he not his ways and means of pro- 
tecting us even though we cannot look into the 
spiritual realm and see just what they are? 

How many cases of miraculous escape from ac- 
cident we all can recall. How many cases we hear 
of, in which persons have been in some incompre- 
hensible way hindered from exposure to an acci- 
dent which would seemingly have destroyed their 
bodies, or they have been brought through the ac- 
cident with little or no injury, while others around 
them, in apparently less peril, have perished. 

Are these occurrences the result of chance? 
There is no chance. We must refer them to the 
working of some law. The Old Testament, as 
well as the New Testament, is full of illustrations 
of the working of this law, in which those who 
trusted in God were saved from harm. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 67 

This saving trust does not come to one who is 
not living in harmony with divine law. Although 
it is a condition of mind, yet it cannot be com- 
manded at a moment's notice. It must have be- 
come habitual. It is born of overcoming self and 
of the doing of good works. 

The whole life of Jesus was an illustration of 
the working of this law. For him, who overcame 
the world, that is, who rose in perfect dominion 
over his lower nature, there was always a way of 
escape from harm. He was able to take himself 
away from the pursuing rabble that threatened 
him. If his boat had pushed out into the sea and 
left him behind, he was able to walk upon the 
waves and reach it. With all his exposures to 
danger, it was not until the last act of the sacred 
drama, after he had decided that it was expedient 
for him to go hence, that, on giving up his mate- 
rial body to the enemy, he suffered any physical 
injury. He could then, as he said, have prayed 
the Father and he would have given him more than 
twelve legions of angels, that is he could have de- 
sired it and trusted in the Father and he would 
have been rescued. But he saw that the time had 
come in which he could do a greater work by go- 



68 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

ing than by remaining longer, so he permitted the 
enemy to deprive him of his physical body. 

Have we any of us ever given ourselves the op- 
portunity to learn what it would do for us to go 
through this mortal life with a feeling of perfect 
trust in God's willingness and ability to protect us, 
not only from all manner of disease, but from all 
manner of accident ?. 



CHAPTER VI. 



INDEPENDENCE. 



There is much fine talk in the world about inde- 
pendence. In order to be spiritually independent 
one must be able to maintain a continued being 
with no aid from other spiritual beings, and no 
necessary relation to them. In order to be mate- 
rially independent, one must be able to maintain 
an existence in the material world with no aid from 
other human beings of the same world, and with 
no necessary relation to them. But there is no 
such thing as either of these kinds of independ- 
ence. It is only in a very limited sense that the 
word independence can apply to any being, crea- 
ture, or thing in all God's great universe. 

Every theist acknowledges that he is wholly de- 
pendent upon his Creator ; but every theist does 

(69) 



70 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

not perceive that much of his dependence upon 
his Creator is through his fellow beings, as in 
mechanics, the lever depends upon the fulcrum 
and the fulcrum in turn depends upon the founda- 
tion on which it stands, without which firm foun- 
dation the whole machine would be useless. 

No one human being can stand alone in spirit 
or in mind. We are never alone in one single 
feeling or thought, and as it is feeling and thought 
that govern our material life, neither can we stand 
alone and unaided in the adjustment of our 
material affairs. 

The whole universe is one grand concatenation 
of God's manifestations, each related to all the 
rest, each a dependency of all the rest. Man is 
no more independent of his fellow beings than 
one planet is independent of all the other planets 
of its solar system, or than one solar system is in- 
dependent of all the other solar systems of the 
great harmoniously moving universe. Each indi- 
vidual is but one link of an endless chain, from 
which he can no more detach himself, than the 
earth can sever its relation to its sister planets 
and depart from its preordained orbit. 

Since by an unalterable law of our being we 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. J I 

are never one instant alone, it behooves us to see 
to it that our companions are good companions, 
that our co-workers are those who do good work. 
How are we enabled to make the right selection ? 
We have the right of choice in the matter. We 
inevitably become united to that sphere of thought 
that corresponds to our own thought. The good 
or evil in ourselves brings us good or evil com- 
panions, and without consciousness or effort on 
our part. 

We should, instead of feeling that we are alone 
in our pursuit of good, rather feel that by the very 
pursuit of good we are enlisting ourselves in the 
numberless army of the angelic hosts, by whose 
aid we are protected in that good. 

We need never fear that in this natural de- 
pendence upon other harmonious minds, evil may 
attach itself to us, for no enemy can possibly 
effect an entrance into God's army. There is no 
law by which evil is permitted to conjoin itselt 
with good. There is no guise in which evil can 
clothe itself, by which it can elude the governing 
spiritual law of like being attracted to like. 

There is a harmful, a monstrous, even a blas- 
phemous pride that leads one to feel that he can 



72 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 



maintain his being without a God. There is a 
more common but less harmful pride that leads 
one to plume himself upon needing no service 
from his fellow beings. While we should be will- 
ing for the sake of right to stand alone, so far as 
we on our low plane can perceive, yet we should 
always know that we are never for one moment 
independent of God who created us, or of our 
fellow beings to whom we are indissolubly related. 

The feeling of self-sufficiency misnamed inde- 
pendence closes the door of the spirit to that 
saving faith by which we live. It deprives us of 
numberless spiritual graces to the weakening of 
our souls and bodies. 

As our feelings and our states of mind govern 
our conduct, this spirit of self-sufficiency presid- 
ing over our external affairs brings inharmony into 
our associations with our fellow beings, and de^ 
prives us and them of the joys of that sweet inter- 
dependence intended as a blessing to us. 

Of course in a certain limited sense, it is right 
for us to be independent. We should be selt- 
supporting. We should not lean upon others for 
that which it is our duty, and should be our pleas- 
ure, to gain by our own efforts. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 73 

Every child, and so far as possible every animal, 
should be taught to earn a living in some suitable, 
pleasurable, and healthful occupation. 

We do not all of us need to go out into the 
busy world in order to earn our right to live. 
We can earn it best by the cheerful performance 
of whatever duty comes to our hand to do. We 
have known daughters of rich parents, as well as 
wives of rich husbands, on whom were bestowed 
every luxury, still earn it all, every day of their 
lives, earn their place and right in the lavish 
household, by their loving and necessary ministra- 
tions. The just and harmonious interdependence 
of such families constitutes their greatest happi- 
ness, and by its sacred observance each member 
fully earns a daily living. In such cases no one 
member of the family wishes to be independent 
of the others, except so far as never to shirk a 
personal duty or responsibility. 

We have also known men and women, having 
no family ties or duties, who have, by their minis- 
trations to the world around them, richly earned 
a right to live. 

We have known poor relations living with richer 
ones upon whose bounty they were said to be de- 



74 ™E NEW BIOLOGY. 

pendent, earn much more than a living every day 
of the year. We have known wives who were 
said to be dependent upon their husbands for sup- 
port, who instead of receiving as their rightful 
earnings, the joint salaries of housekeeper, gov- 
erness and nurse, have received, from the one who 
pretended to love them, only food and shelter and 
a begrudged pittance for which they were obliged 
to beg. In such cases are the wives dependent 
upon the husbands, or are the husbands depend- 
ent upon the wives, and which one of them most 
truly* earns their right to a support? 

There is no word, the true meaning of which 
is so little understood as the word independence. 

There is no rightful living or rightful place, in 
this world or any other world, for one who en- 
deavors to sever his relation to his fellow beings 
and live wholly for himself. It is in doing for 
others, whether we have a fortune or not, that we 
earn our living. 

When one has means sufficient to supply his 
material needs without the necessity of working 
for them, he is said to have an independence. 
But is the man who draws his money from his 
bank, necessiarily more independent of his fellow 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 75 

men than he who draws his money in a weekly sal- 
ary from his employer ? You may say that the 
former owns his time and therefore has leisure for 
something besides monotonous drudgety. But it 
is not the amount of time we have that benefits 
us ; it is the way in which we employ our time, be 
it little or much, that is all important to us. 

How frequently we see one, who is in possesion 
of this independence as it is called, who is so de- 
pendent, even in the generally accepted sense, 
that the day laborer in the streets has more free- 
dom of action than he. His surroundings are so 
inharmonious, or he is so cramped by unavoidable 
claims upon him, that his time and even his 
thoughts seem never at his own disposal. Or, 
again, he may have his whole time, and not know 
anything what to do with it, not put it to any 
profitable use. 

We can easily find those who employ their one 
hour a day to greater advantage, than others their 
whole twenty-four hours. 

Then, in the very highest sense, we all of us 
have our twenty-four hours a day. Our employ- 
ers do not control our souls. No employer can 
hinder us from so possessing and ruling our own 



j6 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

spirits and minds that we accompany our daily 
work with the very highest feelings and thoughts 
of which we are capable. Who can say that, 
under any circumstances, he has no time of his 
own, no time for self-culture. ? 

Instead of calling money an independence, we 
should call harmony of spirit an independence. 
Harmony with divine law is the only freedom there 
is, and it is a freedom which enables us to per- 
ceive and to enjoy that sweet dependence upon 
our Creator and our fellow beings, which is our 
rightful and rich inheritance. 

To receive from others with a perfectly right 
feeling is a grace of spirit rarely met with. To be 
pleased to give others the pleasure of doing for 
us, without permitting our pride, on the one 
hand, to be on the alert, lest our self-sufficiency 
be impugned ; or our greed, on the other hand, to 
become excited so that we selfishly desire more 
than is right for us to accept, is to attain a divine 
medium, to stand on that central point, upon which 
alone one can become poised in the rectitude of 
true dependence. 

We know a lady who is sensitive about having 
the price of anything reduced for her, to suit her 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 77 

reduced circumstances. Of course this feeling is 
less common and less reprehensible than its oppo- 
site, which we see in others who are so in the habit 
of getting things at a reduced price that they feel 
defrauded if they are ever obliged to pay a just 
price for anything. Nevertheless this feeling of 
independence, as it is called, is founded on a false 
pride, a false delicacy. It is well to be so imbued 
with justice that we desire to give a just equivalent 
for everything we receive whether any one knows 
of it or not. Justice should be our ruling motive. 
We will dissect an instance of sensitiveness in the 
lady to whom we refer, and see of what stuff it is 
made. When her physician, knowing her limited 
means, reduced his fees for his services to her, she 
was, as she expressed ft, mortified and distressed. 
Not that she thought that he needed the money, 
or that she considered his half fees too little for 
what he had done for her, but she did not want to 
feel and she did not want him to feel that she could 
not pay what others paid. She liked to be inde- 
pendent, she did not want to accept favors from 
him. She was proud of her spirit of independ- 
ence. If the amount of his half fees had been his 
full price, she would have thought it quite suffic- 



78 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

ient and would not have desired to give him one 
additional farthing. She continued to indulge in 
the tormenting reflection that she had not been 
able to pay his price as others did. This false 
pride was an obstacle in the way of her recovery 
to health. Instead of seeing her error and cor- 
recting it, she morbidly permitted her mind to cling 
to it, and her convalescence turned into a settled 
invalidism. 

If we would carefully examine our unhappy con- 
ditions of mind that we consider the result of right 
and even heroic feelings, we would be astonished 
to find that they were made up of vice instead of 
virtue, or at least error instead of truth. 

We heard a gentleman say that he was perfectly 
independent, that when he received a favor he re- 
paid it at once so as not to be under obligations to 
any one. He talked inflatedly about not being 
beholden to any living being, when the very roof 
that covered his head, and the very food and cloth- 
ing that ministered to his body, to say nofhing of 
the thousand and one superfluities that met his 
fancied requirements, were all supplied him by the 
skill and industry of others. 

In what way was he self-sufficient or independ- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 79 

ent ? Paying for such time and material as he re- 
ceived from others, was merely honesty, and it 
seemed that even this honesty was not founded on 
the right principle, for instead of wishing to give 
an equivalent for what he received because it was 
only just and right to do so, his prominent thought 
was to be self-sufficient, to sever that natural tie 
of dependence intended to foster in us gratitude 
and love towards our neighbor. 

He was proud of his spirit of independence. 
He thought that all obligations could be can- 
celed by material things. He felt that his money 
could pay for everything he received from his fel- 
low beings. 

Money is an equivalent for only material things. 

Whatever good thought or good feeling was be- 
stowed on that gentleman could not be paid for in 
money. When he paid his hatter for his hats, and 
his tailor for his clothes, and his shoemaker for his 
shoes, he paid for only time and material. What- 
ever conscientiousness, good inrention, good 
thought, was put into the work of these artisans, 
could not be paid for in money. 

Good thought and feeling belong to the spirit- 
ual kingdom and have no equivalent in material 



80 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

things. Money does not enter into the spiritual 
realm at all. 

There is only one way in which to repay spirit- 
ual favors, and that is in gratitude and loving con- 
sideration. The gentleman to whom we refer 
would have been offended at the bare thought of 
loving his shoemaker, for example ; yet would not 
a shoemaker come under the head of the neighbor 
whom we are commanded to love ? We are com- 
manded to love our neighbor because it is best for 
us as well as for that neighbor. 

This gentleman's condition of mind was incom- 
patible with gratitude or loving consideration for 
others, which is the only possible payment for spir- 
itual favors, therefore with all his money and all 
his boasted independence, he most signally failed 
to repay the favors that were constantly bestowed 
upon him from the world around him. Any one 
of his so-considered dependents may, in this high 
sense of the word, have been more truly inde- 
pendent than he. 

He was not, and as we have eudeavored to 
prove, could not be self-sufficient, and his very en- 
deavor to be so, his struggle against a natural, a 
divine law, was an injury to him that reflected it- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 8 1 

self in his physical body in a corresponding malady. 
His body became enlarged with dropsy. His self- 
hood was increased by an appropriation to himself of 
error ; his members were increased by an appro- 
priation of a foreign secretion. The inflated con- 
dition of his mind was photographed in his body. 

One cannot battle with divine law and come 
forth from the conflict unwounded. 

We have known those who were so grounded 
in this false pride, misnamed independence, that 
they could not enjoy the slightest favor until they 
felt that they had given a full equivalent for it, 
not in good feeling, but in some material thing. 
Such erroneous conditions of mind are not condu- 
cive to sound health. They are created by an 
over estimate of self, and the sooner they are de- 
stroyed, the sooner the mind will be able to com- 
mand health for the body under its dominion. 

The sooner we are able to perceive, acknowl- 
edge, and delight in the divinely appointed relation 
of interdependence intended to bind all souls to- 
gether in one mutually loving community, which 
is still further dependent on the Infinite Being, the 
sooner we shall be whole and sound in both soul 
and body. 



82 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

When we reach a condition of perfect health in- 
wardly and outwardly, then there will fall upon our 
ears harmonies sweeter than the music of the 
spheres in which the heavenly bodies are moving 
on in perfect accord with one another and with 
their great central sun that rules their sidereal 
heavens. 



CHAPTER VII. 



FAILURE AND SUCCESS. 



In what does real success consist? Will our 
real success in life consist in our reaching a cer- 
tain point for which we are striving in the belief 
that at that point lies our happiness, or will it con- 
sist in our so harmonizing ourselves with God's 
plans for us that, by thus employing the only sure 
means, we have already arrived at the only true 
happiness ? 

Whatever duty lies at hand for us to do, is a 
part of God's plan for us. 

It has been truly said that all failure is success. 
Failure is the negative side of success. In our 
every failure there is a lesson for us, which, if we 
will search for it and find it and learn it, will so in- 

(83) 



84 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

crease our wisdom as to advance instead of retard 
us on the road to success. 

Failures are only the little valleys between the 
foot-hills, through which we must pass before we 
can begin to ascend the mountain ; and each little 
descent as well as each little ascent takes us nearer 
the grand height. 

We may make great mistakes, we may bring 
upon ourselves the most painful consequences, by 
our evil or ignorant condition of mind, yet, if what- 
ever consequences ensue to us from our lack of 
development, work for our improvement, how can 
they be considered failures ? 

The only real failure there is for us, is our fail- 
ure to profit by our non-success. 

When we fail in any undertaking, we are prone 
to feel that we have met with a total loss, that all 
our efforts are without result other than disappoint- 
ment to ourselves and all concerned. 

No sincere effort directed by good intention is 
ever wasted. If it does not effect the good that 
we, in our shortsightedness have in view, it is sure 
to effect some other good. Even if our efforts are 
directed to the attainment of some selfish end that 
we fail to compass, our failure teaches us the very 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 85 

lesson we need to learn and thereby helps us on 
in the working out of our salvation. 

We have heard men who have met with failure 
in advanced age, say that the work of their life 
time was destroyed. The good work of a life time 
cannot be destroyed. The results of our life work 
are so fixed upon us that they have become a part 
of ourselves and we must carry them with us 
wherever we go. 

If we would not have failure let us not need the 
lesson they are intended to teach. Let us not be 
in that spiritual and mental condition, which, by 
the working of divine law, brings these failures 
upon us. Let us, in going over life's foot-hills, so 
bridge over the valleys with wisdom that we can 
pass from one little height to another without these 
descents which we call our failures. If, however, 
we are not just yet able to do so, let us not be 
discouraged, but always look to the next hill be- 
yond, feeling sure that we are not only going on- 
ward, but upward, so that finally the very valleys 
we enter are higher than the hills we have left be- 
hind us. 

If we fail in any undertaking, there is a reason 
why we fail, and that reason is within ourselves. 



86 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

There may be secondary causes in the circumstan- 
ces around us that seem to bring us failure, but 
the primary cause, which built these circumstances, 
is in ourselves, in our peculiar spiritual and mental 
condition. 

Napoleon Bonaparte was right when he said that 
we make circumstances ; but he was mistaken in 
his conception of the way in which we make them. 
It is not done by our personal will, but by our 
spiritual condition, as he had an opportunity of 
learning at the close of his career. 

Until we come into the highest condition, until 
we are fully illuminated, we must expect, like one 
mounting a dimly lighted stairway, to stumble now 
and then, we must expect what we call failures, 
both in our spiritual strivings and in our material 
efforts. 

here are so many who eagerly grasp at any 
suggestion that may aid them to material prosper- 
ity, but they do not care to learn anything con- 
cerning the road to spiritual prosperity. They do 
not know that there is but one road to both, that 
the latter includes the former, and that if they seek 
the greater they will be sure to possess also the 
lesser. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 87 

It has been argued that it would be fatal to our 
material prosperity to devote ourselves exclusively 
to our spiritual condition, leaving our worldly 
affairs to take care of themselves, sitting down 
and passively awaiting the turn of events. 

We would reply that such a view of our duty 
would be a total perversion of the teachings of 
spiritual science. There is nothing fatalistic in 
our line of life, as foreknown and preordained 
by the great Omniscient Being. We are not to 
drift with the current rudderless and oarless. 
We have our share of work to do in connection 
with each event of our lives. Within certain 
limits we shape the course of events for our- 
selves. A true spiritual scientist will, in even the 
least important of his affairs, employ every means 
in his power to bring about a legitimate result, 
and, working, as he will work, without inordinate 
desire, or anxiety concerning results, he will be 
in a condition to discover and to select the most 
effective means to accomplish a proposed end. 
Instead of being indifferent, and letting his worldly 
affairs take care of themselves, he will take better 
care of them than a materialist could possibly do. 
He will trust in spirit, the only true power, and he 



88 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

will thereby have a better use of all his faculties. 
He will be wiser and more far-seeing. 

We know a man, who is governed by an inordi- 
nate desire for worldly success. His business is a 
rational one, and his working for success is per- 
fectly legitimate, but with all his efforts he sends 
forth so much anxiety and so many fears that the 
success he seems to have reason to expect does 
not come. Every fear and every anxious thought 
that he sends forth into the realm of mind works 
against him. For example, he fears that a certain 
man is going to be dishonest with him, he thereby 
sends to that man thoughts of dishonesty, which, 
if he has any affinity with such thought, enter into 
his mind and aid in the generating and furthering 
of a dishonest plan. His fear and anxiety not 
only cause him to play into the hands of the 
enemy, but they bring his own mind into that dis- 
turbed condition in which he has not the best use 
of any of his powers. His memory becomes weak- 
ened, his judgment becomes clouded, his foresight 
and forethought depart from him, and he becomes 
daily more incapable of discerning the most effective 
means to ensure the success for which he is ready 
to sacrifice every other good. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 89 

Of course all this tells upon his physical health, 
which is broken down. He looks pale and hag- 
gard and is nervous and irritable in disposition. 
If any one should tell him that his own condition 
of mind was the only obstacle in the way of his 
success, he would not be able to understand it, yet 
such is the case. There is nothing resembling 
trust in his soul. Even when he is doing his very 
best he has no faith in the good result of his 
efforts. 

Inordinate desire generates fear. Fear is a 
complete inversion of trust, and is destructive of 
mental tranquility and of physical health. 

Too much and too incessant effort frequently in- 
jure an undertaking. It indicates greater ability 
to be able at times to do nothing than to employ 
gigantic effort. The majority of business men feel 
that the issue of every undertaking depends wholly 
upon their ceaseless activity and their personal will 
power directed to material things. Activity and 
will power when wisely directed to spiritual en- 
deavor are powers worthy of consideration ; but to 
direct any of our powers wholly to material things, 
leaving out the causal realm of mind, is eventually 
to fail in even those material things. 



90 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

We should take up any occupation with an in- 
tention to do our best and to succeed, leaving out 
all anxiety, and fear for results, and sending forth 
kindly and encouraging thoughts to employer or 
employed, then, if success does not crown our 
efforts, we may receive it as an indication that 
some better occupation awaits us, which by patient 
endeavor or perhaps by only patient waiting, will 
be sure to come to us. 

It is only by pursuing such a method as this that 
we can learn what our life work is to be. Do we 
give ourselves an opportunity' to learn what success 
this method would bring us ? How many of us 
are wholly without anxiety or fear concerning any 
result whatever? If we are not in this high and 
trustful condition, then our first and most impor- 
tant work is to endeavor to place ourselves in it. 
While we should always intend to do the best 
work of which we are capable, we should think 
more about maintaining a harmonious condition of 
mind than about our work. Interior harmony, 
with a right intention, will do more than the most 
intense desire without this harmony, in composing 
a fine piece of music, or painting a fine picture, or 
writing a good book, or building up a large busi- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 9 1 

ness, or in any work whatever. If we work har- 
moniously our work is sure to be good work with 
little thought about its quality. 

Why is it that out of the vast number of men 
and women, who start a business on their own re- 
sponsibility, so few succeed in their undertaking ? 

In the first place, very few of us give ourselves 
the opportunity of learning what our work really 
is. Influenced by vanity, pride, or ambition, or it 
may be by the less reprehensible motive of better 
serving those dependent upon us, we take up a 
business for which we are not adapted. The re- 
sult is that our vanity or pride or ambition receives 
a shock, or those dependent on us lose instead of 
gaining, by our utter failure in a worldly point of 
view. 

Failures are frequently the result of a lack of 
ability in the required direction. But every human 
being has an ability for something, and he can find 
that something if he will keep his mind in the con- 
dition that permits it to reach him, and permits 
him to recognize it when it comes. 

We do not know all the unseen forces that are 
incessantly at work for us. If we leave ourselves 
more passive in the hands of good, we shall find 



92 THE NEW BIOLOGV. 

ourselves more wisely directed than we could pos- 
sibly be under the guidance of our own selfish in- 
clinations. It is just as impossible to tell what 
ability a man has, when the wrong motive guides 
him in the choice of an occupation, as it is to tell 
how well or how fast a car can go when we see it 
only off the track. Whenever any of our selfish 
desires guide our conduct, we are off the track, 
and we need not be surprised if we, not only re- 
ceive an unmerciful jolting, but also never reach 
our destination. 

In endeavoring to find our own peculiar work, 
we should begin by doing faithfully the work 
that lies at hand. It may be that we need the 
discipline of doing much work that we neither 
like nor excel in, before we can be prepared to 
take up the work we enjoy doing and in which 
we shall eventually succeed. If so, let us equip 
ourselves with patience and courage, and thereby 
shorten the term of our probation and render our- 
selves stronger for the congenial occupation when 
it comes. 

How many square men try to fit themselves in- 
to round places ? It is not because square men 
like round places, for quite the contrary is the 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 93 

case. A square man is naturally attracted to a 
square place. In our natural, our best condition, 
we are attracted to the sort of occupation suited 
to us. If we are actuated by a desire to do only 
what is best, we shall be sure to find that best. 
Regard for a high position, and other worldly con- 
siderations impel us towards a certain vocation, 
and we have but the one thought, the one desire, 
to reach it at all hazards. We reach it, we pur- 
sue it, and we fail in it. 

For illustration, two young men started in busi- 
ness at the same time, on opposite sides of the 
street. One opened a shoe store and the other, 
a painters studio. They have been in business 
some years and are neither of them successful. 

The painter displays the very best judgment in 
attending to the pecuniary details of his business. 
It is a pleasure to go forth and buy his materials. 
He enjoys every part of his business except the 
painting itself. He is fond of opening his studio 
to the public and arranging for sales, but unfor- 
tunately his pictures are poor and the expected 
sales do not take place. He is annoyed and dis- 
contented and wishes he dealt in a stock that 
would sell rapidly. He envies the young man 



94 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

across the street, and feels sure that if he had that 
shoe store he could build up a business in no 
time, for he knows all about tanneries and leather. 
He wanted to be a merchant, but he, with all his 
family, thought it would be such a fine thing for 
him to be a painter, that he determined to be 
one. 

The proprietor of the shoe store spends every 
spare moment in sketching. A lady customer 
comes in and he is so struck with her picturesque 
face that he pays little attention to her wants, and 
she determines never to go into that store again. 
He is cheated in the leather he buys. He knows 
so little about his stock that he does not discover 
the dishonesty of a clerk. There is nothing in 
his condition of mind to attract or to keep custo- 
mers. He tries to be conscientious, but he feels 
such an indifference if not aversion to his busi- 
ness, that his mental atmosphere keeps it stag- 
nant. He has a talent for painting and he always 
wanted to be a painter, but the uncle, who set him 
up in the shoe business, would not open a studio 
for him, and, feeling that he must not throw away 
pecuniary advantages, he made the great mistake 
of fixing upon the wrong vocation. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 95 

Now, if these two young men could have 
changed places, undoubtedly they would both 
have been happy and successful. 

If the painter had thrown aside all selfish con- 
siderations he would have been able to see clearly 
what his vocation was, and he would have had 
the courage to pursue it. 

If the shoe merchant had refused the start in a 
business for which he was unfitted, and taken up 
some temporary employment, and trusted and 
waited patiently, his time would have come to 
pursue the vocation for which he was fitted. 

We know of a talented painter, who in his early 
days had not the ghost of a prospect of ever be- 
ing able to follow this calling. But he patiently 
and trustfully waited his time, not in idleness, but 
in industry, and he is now, while still in his youth, 
established in a fine studio and doing well. 

We can learn what wonderful things God can 
and will do for us, only by pursuing the right and 
putting our trust in him. 

Instead of feeling that ambition and ceaseless 
activity are required to push us into success, let 
us realize that the conscientious fulfillment of the 
duty of the hour, whether it be working or simply 



g6 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

waiting, can alone start us on the road to true 
success. 

When women as well as men bring themselves 
into so harmonious a condition of mind that they 
desire to follow the vocation for which they are 
best fitted, that vocation, whatever it may be, will 
be open to them. They cannot be kept out of 
places for which they are eminently fitted. 

We say to all women, instead of complaining 
that you are not allowed to enter certain fields of 
usefulness, fit yourself for those fields — and you 
cannot fit yourselves for them if your work does 
not lie in them — and you will then by a spiritual 
law be so attracted to them that no one can pos- 
sibly keep you away from them. 

If we are in a harmonious condition we will not 
be likely to undertake anything that is not suited 
to us, we will not be likely to attempt anything 
that is irrational, for spirituality, instead of con- 
flicting with rationality, always includes it. What- 
ever we, in a good spiritual condition, undertake, 
even though it may bear upon this material exis- 
tence, will be quite likely to succeed. All our 
plans will be modified with an if. We wish to 
succeed if our lands are God's plans, but //"they 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 97 

are not, we are perfectly willing to have it proved 
by the total frustration of them. No inordinate 
desire can take possession of a harmonious mind. 
When we rise up into a high condition we shall 
not need to think so much about this if, for we 
will naturally and unconsciously co-operate with 
divine intention. God's plans will be our plans. 

The members of an orchestra do not each ren- 
der their strains in accordance with their own 
ideas of time and expression ; they follow their 
leader. Did they not follow their leader, discord 
would take the place of harmony. When a musi- 
cian is unpracticed he must closely watch the baton 
of the leader ; but when he becomes educated and 
skillful, he will be so in sympathy with his leader 
that he will scarcely know he is being led. 

When we rise up into harmony, we are in so 
close sympathy with our Divine Leader that we 
do not know we are being led. We are one with 
him. As Jesus said of himself, " I and my Father 
are one," so we each can say when we in purpose 
become one with the Ruling Spirit of the uni- 
verse. 

Then, and not until then, shall we have true 
success. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



OLD AGE. 



What is old age ? When we have passed a cer- 
tain number of years in this life, what part of us 
is old ? We surely cannot suppose that even 
scores of years count as anything for the immortal 
part of us that lives forever. It must, then, be 
our material bodies that we consider old. But 
are they in reality ever old ? 

When we regard material objects with our ma- 
terial senses alone, our ideas concerning them are 
not only limited, but frequently false. The earth 
which moves so fast seems to be standing still in 
space, while the sun, which stands so firm in its 
system, seems to be ever moving around us. 

A mass of iron and a mass of rock, which seem 
to us so solid and so still, are by a finer sense dis- 
(98) 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 99 

covered to be composed of non-contiguous moving 
atoms. 

There is in reality no such thing as still life. 
All is life and life is motion. Spiritual life per- 
vades the universe. All matter is projected and 
sustained by spiritual power. 

What we call inanimate nature is not only full 
of motion, but it is full of sound. If the finer 
vibrations of moving matter are imperceptible to 
our gross senses, the limitation is in us. If our 
dull ears fail to catch the vast number of tones 
above and below those few octaves of which we 
have knowledge, the limitation is not in nature's in- 
struments, but in us. If to one the flowing water 
of the brook sends forth a full clear song, while to 
another it is only motion without sound, the differ- 
ence is in the varying perceptions of the two. 

To gain an accurate knowledge of even matter 
we must employ a perception higher then the 
physical senses. Matter is ruled by spirit. To 
gain a true knowledge of matter we must learn 
something of spirit. 

As inorganic matter is held in form by spiritual 
power, so organic matter is changed in form by 
the same power. 



IOO THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

Inorganic matter moves, but does not grow. It 
is not recuperative. Organic matter moves and 
grows and is recuperative. 

Inorganic matter is nature's store-house of raw 
material, while organic matter is the workshop 
that, with a definite intention, selects and utilizes 
the raw material. 

Nature's store-house as we, w T ith our physical 
senses perceive it, is still and lifeless, while her 
workshop is moving, busy, and full of life and in- 
tention. 

The most wonderful piece of organic matter, our 
material body, unlike a piece of wood or stone, is 
constantly changing its atoms. It is incessantly 
throwing off those for which it has no further use, 
and from nature's lavish store, accreting to itself 
new ones. 

We say the body does this for itself, but the 
body no more performs these operations than the 
raw cotton in a factory weaves itself into a fabric. 
It is mind that presides over all working in matter. 

The work that is carried on in any shop, is pre- 
sided over by the mind in charge of that special 
shop. 

Our material body is our material workshop^ 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 101 

We are placed in special charge over it. If the 
work therein executed is not done normally, that 
s, in accordance with divine law and intention, it 
reflects on us who have charge of it, and we are 
just as responsible for its condition when we have 
been in charge over it for ninety years as we were 
in the beginning. 

Let us endeavor to see this body that we con- 
sider so solid and so real, as it truly is, as made 
up of myriads of moving atoms that do not even 
touch one another, and that are held together and 
at the same time separated by a spiritual intelli- 
gence, which is constantly sending them forth and 
taking from the elements new ones to fill their 
places. 

That illustrious member of so many medical 
fraternities, Mons. J. M. Charcot, as well as other 
scientists, advances the opinion that we have an 
entirely new body every year. Mons, Camille 
Flammario7i, another celebrated Frenchman, says 
this entire change takes place in less than a year. 
Others, who lay claim to a finer and more accur- 
ate perception concerning the subject, assert that 
we have an entirely new body every few months. 
There are those who have been bold enough to 



102 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

advance the idea that one month is sufficient to 
work this entire change. 

How solid then is that body which consists more 
of space than of molecules ? How real and lasting 
is that body, which is never the same during any 
two consecutive moments ? How old is that body, 
which in the light of ordinary science, has never 
at any time, in any of its atoms, been in existence 
more than one year. 

We would not talk so much about the body be- 
ing old and wearing out, if we fully realized that 
it is never more than one year old. 

Why should we suppose that spirit, after it has 
sustained and renewed this body for a certain 
length of time, becomes tired and can no longer 
do its work well ? Spirit is never tired. Spiritual 
power is never exhausted or even diminished. So 
long as spirit has charge of a body it is able to 
keep that body in a sound condition, if we permit 
it to do so. Spiritual power, when permitted to 
flow in upon us, will continue good work just as 
long as that work is needed. 

It is for us to see to it that we give this vital 
force fair play, to see to it that we do not hinder 
the divinely appointed work. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 103 

The body under our dominion is like clay in the 
hands of the potter. It waits for us to bring to 
bear upon it the fire of truth and give it a more 
perfect quality. 

It is neither to be expected nor desired that we 
should keep this material body forever; but so 
long as we do have it we should keep it in good 
repair. 

It is not to be supposed that even with the most 
perfect harmony of mind, the body will undergo 
no changes in appearance. Any change in the 
mind will produce a change in the body under its 
dominion. As we do not expect to know of a 
mind that has undergone no change from infancy 
to old age, so we do not expect to know of a body 
that has remained the same throughout an earthly 
experience. But change does not necessarily 
mean disease. 

A plant is not subject to blight by reason of its 
age, but by reason of something wrong in the con- 
ditions that govern it. So it is with man. Disease 
comes upon him, not by reason of his age, but by 
reason of an inharmony in the condition of mind 
that controls his body. The grand old Sequoia 
trees, that are estimated to have stood for fouj 



104 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

thousand years in the forests of California, and 
that now rear their verdant branches up over three 
hundred feet into the blue ether, evince no more 
signs of blight than the young saplings that have 
just sprung up around them The texture of their 
wood and of their bark is not the same as that of 
the wood and bark of a young tree, but these 
changes do not include blight or decay. 

One at eighty years of age would not, even 
under the most perfect conditions, present the 
same appearance that he did at twenty ; but he 
might be even more sound and healthy. The 
youth of twenty does not look as he did when 
only one year old, yet he may be even more sound 
and healthy and free from suffering. 

Why is it, then, that we decline with our advanc- 
ing years ? It is because, when we do not create 
disease, we harbor it. We believe, and all the 
world around us believes with us, that a certain class 
of ailments is an inevitable accompaniment to old 
age, and this belief invites the ailments to come 
upon us, and nourishes and perpetuates them 

Instead of yielding to this universal error, let us 
feel sure that there is no ailment whatever that 
need come upon us because we are old. Let us 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. IO5 

realize that under the dominion of a mind in har- 
mony with divine law, the body, in the incessant 
work of recuperation that is going on, will accrete 
to itself only sound particles, and moreover that it 
will adjust these particles in accordance with the 
same law and order that governed the formation 
of that body in the beginning. 

Whenever health follows disease, it is because 
unsound atoms have been thrown off and sound 
ones have been taken in their place, it is because 
misplaced atoms have been normally readjusted, it 
is because functions have been set normally to 
work again, it is because of any one or all three of 
these changed conditions of the material organism. 
Let us then, by an exercise of our faith, by an 
effort of our will and imagination, invite what is 
called nature, not only to set about this good 
work, but to continue it indefinitely. 

We assert that in old age we can, not only retain 
good health when we have it, but even if disease 
is upon us, we can drive it forth by the self-same 
method by which we drove it forth in youth. If 
our body of this year, irrespective of our age, is 
diseased, we can, during the work of re-formation, 



106 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

so control the new body of next year, that it will 
be a sound, whole body. 

Disease does not perpetuate itself. It is kept 
alive by conscious or unconscious mind in domin- 
ion over it. 

Why is it that scars upon the skin and flesh are 
reproduced indefinitely? Not a single molecule 
of that skin or flesh that forms the scar is the same 
as at this time last year, and yet there is the scar 
the same as ever. It is a faithful copy of last year's 
scar. It has appeared exactly the same again and 
again, for perhaps the last fifty years. Our mind, 
together with other minds, has retained that 
model and externalized or copied it in our body 
fifty times, and just so long as it is retained in 
mind, it will continue to be externalized in matter. 

Nature, that is, spiritual law working in matter, 
will continue to copy an old model until a new 
one is presented. When we destroy an imperfect 
model and set up a perfect one in its place, then 
we may reasonably expect that our bodies will 
present a faithful copy of that perfect model. 

Now, although it may not be worth any great 
concentrated effort to rid ourselves of scars, since 
they do not seriously interfere with health or hap- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. IO7 

piness, and we have higher uses for our higher 
powers, yet it is certainly worth great effort to rid 
ourselves of unsound organs or members. If, for 
example, our lungs this year are ulcerated, we 
should not hold these ulcers in mind so that they 
cannot avoid being reproduced in our new lungs 
of next year. On the contrary, we should be will- 
ing to make any amount of effort to correct the 
cause in mind — which may be grief or anxiety, or 
any other erroneous condition — and also to form 
a new model of healthy lungs, which shall cause 
all the unsound atoms to be replaced by sound 
ones, forming in our lungs a photograph of our 
perfect thought ; and this can be done at any age. 
It is said to be perfectly natural for certain men- 
tal and physical faculties to fail us in advanced 
age. Spiritual science would assert that there is 
nothing natural about it, that there is no reason 
why any faculty, mental or physical, should, with 
continued exercise, ever, at any age, fail us. All 
our faculties are made for use, and if we defeat 
divine intention by not using them, they are quite 
likely to fail us. If, for example, we place one of 
our arms in a sling and never use it, we pursue a 
course that will render it useless. So it is with 



108 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

any of our physical and mental faculties. We 
need not expect to have in old age the normal use 
of any faculty that we have allowed to rust. 

It is a widespread error to expect our eyes to 
fail us in old age although we may have made the 
wisest use of them all our lives. Why should they 
fail us ? At any age whatever our eyes are not 
more than one year old. If we are ninety years 
of age we have had ninety pairs of eyes. We do 
not expect an infant one year old to have failing 
sight. 

You will perhaps argue that the lens of your 
eyes becomes flattened and hardened with age ; but 
as we have endeavored to show, your eyes have 
no age, they are always new and young. Of 
course if the lens of your eyes is flattened and 
hardened, you will have defective sight ; but why 
should it be so, or if it is so, why should it remain 
so ? It must be because our mind, as it advances, 
and should become more capable, permits itself to 
do poorer work, so that each new pair of eyes 
constructed under its dominion is a little poorer 
than the last pair, until we have, what we, in com- 
pany with all the rest of the civilized world expect 
to have, viz.: failing sight. We do not intention- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 109 

ally do poor work. We do not intentionally shut 
out the spiritual life force that is necessary for a 
normal reconstruction of our material bodies ; but 
we are so governed by prevailing false belief re- 
specting age in our material body, that we cannot 
retain a perfect model for the work that is going 
on. In this way our eyes, as well as every other 
member, are subject to a constant maltreatment 
from us and from all the world around us. How 
can we expect them, having no knowledge or 
power of their own, to resist these maltreatments ? 
If a drawing master should set up upon his 
platform a deformed figure for his pupils to copy, 
he would not be surprised to find the deformities 
of the figure reproduced in the work of each 
pupil Models of the human figure as deformed 
and diseased, are already set up for us in the realm 
of mind. They have been set up and fixed in the 
world of thought for ages. It is not, therefore 
strange, that we continue to reproduce them. Let 
us tear them down ! It will, of course, require 
effort, but effort against error is rightly-directed 
effort. Let us vigorously deny all these universal 
errors regarding our failing faculties. Let us con- 
fidently assert that, so long as spirit has charge of 



I 
1 10 THE NEW BIOLOGV. 



reconstructing our eyes, for example, just so long 
spirit is perfectly able to do its work well. Let us 
rest assured that, whatever be our age, there is no 
reason why the new atoms, which our eyes are 
momentarily accreting to themselves, should not 
be perfectly sound atoms, and further, that there 
is no reason why these sound atoms should not be 
ad usted in strict accordance with the law that 
governed the formation of all our new eyes dur- 
ing the years of our youth. 

If the work of forming new eyes is normally 
performed, as it will be under the dominion of a 
mind in truth, the lens cannot become flattened 
and hardened. If it has already become so, then 
let us apply the only sure remedy, a mind in truth, 
and it cannot remain so. 

Why is it that there are numberless cases on 
record in which persons of advanced age have ex- 
perienced no failure of sight ? Whenever such a 
thing occurs, it occurs in accordance with some 
law, for there is no chance. If a thing occurs 
once it is proved possible. Whatever is possible, 
cati, under the same conditions, occur again. 
What are the conditions necessary to the preser- 
vation of sight ? We believe them to be a domi- 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 1 1 

nating mind and spirit in harmony with divine 
law. We believe them to be a knowledge and 
application of truth. 

Physical blindness corresponds to spiritual blind- 
ness. Failure of physical sight corresponds to an 
inability to continue to see truth. There is a uni- 
versal failure to see truth as governing the recon- 
struction of our eyes. In youth we expect to have 
good sight; we fully believe it to be our right. 
In old age we have permitted our belief in truth 
to be argued away from us. We do not wonder 
that as a rule the spiritual blindness that surrounds 
us, added to our own, reflects itself in our failing 
sight. We only wonder that there are any excep- 
tions to this rule. 

A knowledge and application of truth can work 
all good. We know of cases in which persons 
have by spiritual science, preserved unfailing sight 
through advanced years, even against the obsta- 
cles of heredity and surrounding error. We know 
further of those, who after wearing eye-glasses for 
some years, have entirely discarded them, with 
constantly improving sight as a result. 

The same arguments that apply to failing sight, 
apply also to any other failing, faculty. When we 



1 1 2 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

become desirous above all things of seeing truth, 
we shall be able to preserve our sight. When we 
become desirous above all things of listening to 
truth, we shall preserve our hearing. When we 
become desirous above all things of remembering 
truth, we shall be able to preserve our memory, so 
as to remember also even less important matters, 
for the greater contains the lesser. 

Our earnest desire for truth will bring us truth 
and irrespective of our age. 

Our mind should be just as capable of a domin- 
ion over our body at ninety years of age as at 
twenty. There is no age at which a harmonious 
mind will feel obliged to quit work and leave itself 
a prey to dominating minds in error. Our mate- 
rial body not only should never be under the do- 
minion of our mind in error, but it should always 
be under the active or passive dominion of our 
mind in truth, in order to protect it from the error 
that is all around us everywhere. 

Instead of resignedly expecting that at a certain 
age, maladies and suffering or a general break- 
down of health, must inevitably come upon us, let 
us so believe and trust in spiritual power, that at 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. I 1 3 

any age we shall be preserved, mind and body, in 
a sound, whole condition. 

If we live in ignorance or defiance of divine 
law at twenty years of age, we give ourselves up 
to broken down health and disease at that age. 
If, on the other hand, we live in harmony with 
divine law at ninety years of age, we protect our- 
selves in health at that age. 

Truth shall make us whole. Truth shall make 
us free. As we advance year by year in truth, 
let us feel that each new body, which year by year 
nature so wonderfully reconstructs for us, will be 
more sound and more whole than the last one, 
thus when our work is finished and we drop that 
body, we shall not enter into the spiritual realm 
through the unnatural and revolting gateway of 
disease. 

How many cases we all know, of those who 
have dropped their bodies without disease ! The 
grandfather perhaps, who has just finished a use- 
ful day's work, and with unimpaired digestion has 
enjoyed his evening meal, sits in his arm chair and 
quietly passes away. Of course the learned men 
of science, who have always turned their attention 
to matter instead of spirit, decide that there muts 



I 14 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

have been some hidden malady, to cause his de- 
parture. Even after an autopsy, in which no sign 
of an ailment is discovered, they still assert, that 
as there must be a cause for every effect, there 
has been some ailment, though beyond their de- 
tection. Their logic is sound, there is no effect 
without a cause, but studying only matter, the 
world of secondary cause, they are ignorant of 
that spiritual law by which one, when his work 
here is finished, and he is ripe and ready for a 
higher condition, can, in the midst of health, be 
attracted to another realm and depart thence as 
quietly and as naturally as the sound, ripe fruit 
falls from a tree. 

There is much fine talk about departing this 
life in God's appointed time, but we think that 
very few depart this life in God's appointed time. 
They depart in their own time. Through sin or 
error they wander away from his laws and destroy 
their bodies. They may do so sinfully and con- 
sciously, as in the case of the intentional suicide, 
or they may do so ignorantly and unconsciously, 
by indulgence in destructive conditions of mind 
or weakly harboring disease. In the former case 
the deed perhaps is accomplished in an instant, 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 1 5 

while in the latter it may be the work of years ; 
but in both they have equally destroyed their 
bodies, instead of waiting God's appointed time 
to go. 

Of course whenever we go hence it is all for 
the best, and the only thing possible for us in our 
condition, the condition that renders it best and 
possible for us ; but then if our condition is a 
wrong one, we should not be in that condition, 
and it is our work and not God's work that we 
are in that condition. We may not be immedi- 
ately responsible for going before our time, but 
we are immediately responsible for the condition 
of mind that abruptly and unnaturally tore us 
from our material bodies. An intoxicated man 
may not be immediately responsible for a crime 
committed unconsciously ; but he is immediately 
responsible for his condition of intoxication. 

If we were in a high spiritual condition, instead 
of passing away in infancy and youth as is the 
case in our present stage of unfoldment, we would 
be quite likely to advance far beyond the three 
score and ten years allotted to man by a people 
even more material than ourselves. 

In spite of this average regarding the age of 



Il6 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

man, upon which we have allowed ourselves to 
fix, we constantly hear of those who pass far be- 
yond this limit, which is an artificial and not a 
natural one. An encyclopoedia of human longev- 
ity, now being edited, contains sketches of twenty 
thousand persons aged one hundred years and 
more. All ages of the world and all races could 
furnish their quota to such a list, and yet we 
stubbornly hold fast to the idea that it is not nat- 
ural to remain in this life beyond a certain fixed 
time. 

We think that if we possessed the truth regard- 
ing human lougevity and were in a high condi- 
tion, we would not only remain here an indefinite 
number of years, but we would remain with sound, 
whole bodies that would serve us well until our 
earthly work was accomplished. We would have 
no declining years, for instead of declining, or 
tending downward, we would, as we advanced, 
tend upward. 

There is no such thing as old age for the T ;soul 
that lives forever. There is no such thing as old 
age for the material body that is incessantly renewed. 

Old age has no existence for us, except among 
the falsities of our erroneous thought. 



CHAPTER IX, 



GOOD AND EVIL. 

Good and evil, like white and black, are the 
positive and negative conditions of life. God 
created good and man created evil. 

Man by an abuse of his free will, turned his lib- 
erty into license, and evil was the result. Man 
by perverting his faculties, which were all intend- 
ed for good, and employing them for his own 
selfish gratification, brought evil into the world. 

If this wrong condition of things has been 
brought about and now exists, and we feel that 
we involuntarily enter into it, how are we to lift 
ourselves up out of it ? 

There is a wide-spread error regarding the sac- 
rifice we are obliged to make in turning our atten- 
tion to spiritual culture. Sacrifice implies the 

(117) 



1 1 8 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

giving up of some good for the sake of a higher 
good. But spiritual science, in harmony with the 
teaching of Jesus, enjoins upon us to give up 
only evil, and to hold fast to that which is good, 
and sacrifice does not enter into it at all. It 
points out to us the advantage, the economy of 
yielding up evil, in the form of sin, error and dis- 
ease, and urges upon us to pursue only good in 
the form of truth and health, and also helps us to 
discriminate between the two. 

To sweep away evil by simply denying its exis- 
tence, is a summary and easy way of disposing of 
it; but unfortunately it fails to teach us what is 
evil and what is good in that heterogeneous col- 
lection of thought in the vast store-house of our 
confused and ignorant mind. While it is perfect- 
ly true that there is no evil as created and perpet- 
uated by God, and that the only evil is our per- 
version of good, yet the mere assertion that all is 
good, may not help some, who are in the dark- 
ness of error, to see in just what way they have 
perverted good. 

As Jesus seemed to realize when he enjoined 
upon \is to overcome evil with good, we need to 
know what our evil is in order to know what to 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 1 9 

overcome. There are very few around us at the 
present day, as there were very few around him 
at that day, who are so unfolded that they can 
come up immediately out of their evil by the sim- 
ple utterance of broad ultimate truth. In order 
to climb they need a ladder by which they can 
rise step by step. 

After Jesus had healed the man who had been 
paralyzed for thirty-eight years, he seems to have 
thought that there was something more to do for 
him. The man needed to be warned regarding 
his future, and Jesus, after pronouncing him 
whole, told him to sin no more, lest a worse thing 
should come upon him. He turned the man's at- 
tention to the sin or error that had probably been 
the cause of his infirmity, so that if he had not 
realized it before, he was then made aware of the 
special evil that he had to overcome. 

When Jesus told the woman of Samaria all 
things that ever she did, as she expressed it, he 
undoubtedly had in view some good for the 
woman. While he may have wished her to rec- 
ognize his gift of intuition in order to arouse her 
faith in his teaching, he doubtless also desired to 
call her attention to the special error in whose 



120 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

bondage she was at that moment living, that sh$ 
might more fully realize her guilt and strive to rid 
herself of the evil. 

Sin and error, the primal causes of suffering 
and disease, arise from mistaking evil for good. 
We all, however depraved we may be, desire only 
good, and as soon as we learn what really is good, 
we are ready to drop evil and pursue that good. 
As soon as the scales are taken from our eyes, we 
will, like Saul of Tarsus, perceive the evil to be 
evil and turn our energies to good. Spiritual 
knowledge takes the scales from our eyes. It 
gives us the power to recognize evil and to bring 
it to the front, and vanquish it with good. 

Spiritual science, instead of wresting from us 
all material good, as is sometimes thought, not 
only permits us that good in abundance, but 
teaches us the highest and most enjoyable use of 
it. 

" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth." Those who maintain that lowly and 
correct attitude of mind enjoined upon us by 
spiritual teaching, shall be the very ones who will 
attract and most enjoy material blessings. 

Would there not be something revolting in the 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 12 1 

intention of a Creator who could place us in the 
midst of material beauties and delights that were 
designed only as a snare to tempt us from the 
path of virtue ? They were created for our enjoy- 
ment, and they are a snare to us only when we 
put them out of their place. 

Material things are intended to minister to our 
pleasure just as long as we are in that stage of 
unfoldment in which we require their ministry. 
They were never intended to minister to our high- 
est needs, and the very endeavor to make them 
the all in all, is a perversion of good — therefore 
an evil — that recoils upon us, who so misuse 
them, and deprives us of the highest enjoyment 
to be derived from them, which is the true inherit- 
ing of the earth. 

A pure and spiritual minded lady, who was 
seeking and finding spiritual truth, took alarm 
when told that no true spiritual scientist could 
possibly make use of intoxicating liquors. She 
said, " What ! Shall we be obliged to make our- 
selves unpleasant by refusing wine at a friend's 
table, and by having none upon our own ? And 
will it not end in our being obliged to give up our 
dinners, and our carriages and our dress and our 



122 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

jewels and everything that seems to belong to our 
position in the world, and going into sackcloth 
and austerities ? " 

She had abundant wealth, and as far as she 
knew was using it nobly. She was, like the ma- 
jority among the cultured of this age, in that stage 
of her development in which material beauties 
and refinements ministered to her needs, and it 
seemed to her like losing all joy out of her life to 
give them up. But spiritual science does not urge 
us to give up anything that is good, it only teaches 
us what things are good, and how to give mate- 
rial things their rightful place. So long as we de- 
sire material things there is no reason why we 
should not have them. That is what they are 
created for. They are simply a response to our 
capability of enjoying them. But we can perhaps 
imagine a degree of unfoldment somewhere in our 
future, in which we shall, instead of having felt 
constrained to give them up, simply have out- 
grown them. There is nothing sinful, there is 
nothing wrong in a fondness for material things, 
it is only an indication of our spiritual youth. 
The purest and best of children are fond of toys, 
which a few years later on have become nothing 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 23 

to them. A mother does not feel that at a certain 
age she must make her children give up their toys, 
for she knows that as soon as they are sufficiently 
unfolded and their minds are turned upon more 
important things, they will naturally drop them, 
and there will be no sacrifice in the case. 

The wrong in our love of material things comes 
in when we cannot be happy without a cer- 
tain desired quality or quantity of them. We 
should be in that harmonious condition of mind 
in which we enjoy them when they are rightfully 
ours, but are just as contented when deprived of 
them. We should love them for the power of do- 
ing good to others, which they bestow upon us, 
as well as for the pleasure we personally derive 
from them. 

The use and enjoyment of jewels and beautiful 
fabrics that are the rightfully acquired possessions 
of any woman, are legitimately hers, and are in- 
tended for her. They bestow upon her a power 
for good to her fellow beings that she would not 
otherwise possess. Were she to replace her fine 
fabrics with sackcloth, and leave her elegant man- 
sion for a hut, she could do nothing like the 
amount of good that is possible with her in that 



124 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

station, and with those surroundings that became 
hers in accordance with divine law working through 
her own peculiar development. If she has right- 
fully acquired wealth, it is because it is best for 
her to have it, but it is a gift for the right employ- 
ment of which, she is wholly responsible. It is in- 
tended for her to make good use of it, to press 
the mammon of unrighteousness or material things 
into the service of good. A finely decorated house 
or an elegantly appointed entertainment may not 
in themselves, be particularly righteous, still they 
may serve to attract within one's sphere a vast 
number of those on whose lives one can exert an 
immense influence for good. 

A greater responsibility accompanies wealth than 
is generally thought. If you have rightfully ac- 
quired wealth it is because a good use of it is pos- 
sible with you, if you make the effort for it ; it is 
because you are unfolded in just the way to make 
it your servant, instead of your slave, if you desire 
and strive to do so ; it is because you have the 
ability to use it well if you can conquer self enough 
to give that ability full scope. 

Giving pleasure to others by means of material 
things, while it is not the highest good, may be al 



THE NEW BIOLOGY . 1 2 5 

the good of which you are at this moment capable. 
If so, it is your highest good. But when you come 
into more light you will learn that the highest use 
of material things is to make them serve as step- 
ping stones to spiritual things, to make them bring 
under your influence vast numbers of the unspirit- 
ual with whom they will begin the work of enlight- 
enment. These material things will be to you a 
necessary tool in your spiritual work. A candle- 
stick, although it gives no light, is necessary in 
order that the candle may shed abroad its light. 
Material things help you to throw your light upon 
the masses. 

In speaking of our legitimate right to material 
things, we would say that it is confined to such as 
are good. If we, by some perversion of good, 
have created evil in any material thing, we have 
no more right to use it than we had to create it. 

The lady to whom we have referred, was alarm- 
ed lest spiritual science, into whose truths she de- 
sired to come, should oblige her to give up all en- 
joyable material things. She did not know where 
to draw the line. The line is to be drawn between 
those which are good and those which are evil. 
Spiritual science will not oblige you to give up 



126 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

anything; but it will so enlighten you that you 
will voluntarily let go your hold upon the evil. If 
you are once in the possession of spiritual knowl- 
edge, those material things which carry with them 
an element of evil, will be as offensive to you, as 
a pestilential atmosphere to healthy lungs. 

A tree is known by its fruits. Any material 
thing that works an injury to yourself or others 
must carry with it an element of evil, and is there- 
fore to be rejected. If man receives harm from 
something that he has invented, the evil may be 
traced back to the very invention and distribution 
of it. If he receives harm from something already 
created, he may rest assured that he has not yet 
discovered its rightful use, for God created noth- 
ing to injure man. There is no such intention in 
any of God's gifts to man. Spiritual teaching does 
not force us to give up even the most harmful 
things ; but it gives us such light, such knowledge 
that we see evil as evil and voluntarily reject it. 

To one who has once risen up into the pure at- 
mosphere of truth, any unnatural stimulant or nar- 
cotic such as intoxicating liquors, tobacco, coffee, 
tea, opium or any other poisonous drug, would, by 
a perfectly natural law, be only offensive. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 27 

If you were in spiritual knowledge you would 
not have to be told that it is indulging in an evil 
to place wine upon your tables and thus lead your 
sons and daughters into intemperance, and place 
temptation before those who have already fallen 
into it. If you had once made the voice of the 
spirit your guide you would become so sensitive 
to contact with evil that a glass of wine set before 
you, would for you, contain the concentrated suf- 
fering of thousands of men in the blackness of 
misery, and the pangs and wails of hosts of agon- 
ized and starving women and children who have 
fallen a prey to this desolating evil. If you felt all 
this in an unnatural stimulant that was placed be- 
fore you, would you need to be urged to abstain 
from it ? Would there be any enjoyment in it for 
you ? If you once realized that all the good that 
is supposed to reside in these artificial stimulants, 
can be found in a greater degree in something that 
contains no element of evil, in something that does 
not induce abnormal appetites and passions, could 
you call it hospitality to set them before your 
friends, or could you commit the monstrous folly of 
offering them to your children ? 

If you were in a full realization of God's inten- 



128 THE NEW BIOLOGY, 

tion regarding a use of the material body, cculd 
you admire in others, or much worse, could you 
adopt for yourself, such fashions in clothing as 
prevented a natural and upright gait, or such as 
crippled you in the use of your vital organs? 
Would you be able so to descend from your high 
estate as to adopt any harmful fashion in dress, 
the very invention of which is only a pandering to 
vanity or impurity. 

One, who with a lofty motive in some good to 
her fellow beings, might find it necessary to be 
deprived of a normal use of her vital organs or of 
her members, might, nevertheless, by means of 
her trust in good, be sustained and protected in 
health. But you, who with no good motive thus 
misuse your material body are not, and cannot be 
protected in health. You may have no desire to 
propagate evil — and we think very few have such 
a desire — you may be only a weak slave to pre- 
vailing opinion, nevertheless you are sowing evil 
for yoursell and for others to reap. You will suf- 
fer the bondage of your voluntary slavery in men- 
tal degradation and physical decline. 

You who are rich in this world's goods, who 
occupy high places in the land, who are leaders of 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 29 

fashion or custom, what power for good you throw 
away when you so fail to realize truth that in your 
toilets, in your salons, and at your tables, it is evil 
instead of good that you sow broadcast. 

How grand would be that woman who, in the 
midst of luxury, could yet in the dispensation of 
all her favors, so draw the line between good and 
evil, that her influence was all on the side of 
good. 

You may think that your associations are so 
material that you cannot rise above them. But if 
you have materiality in your surroundings, it is be- 
cause there is something in your own condition of 
mind that attracts for you that materiality. There 
is something in you that makes it possible for you. 
When you, yourself become more spiritual, your 
surroundings will modify themselves in harmony 
with your new condition. 

When you come into a knowledge of truth, you 
will have all the courage necessary to enable you 
to teach rationality and purity by your own exam- 
ple, or rather you will be in that condition in which 
no courage is demanded, for you will not be able 
to avoid becoming, yourself, an impersonation of 
rationality and purity. The lily teaches its lesson 



130 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

of purity without effort, because it is, in itself, an 
impersonation of purity. You will unconsciously 
draw the line between good and evil. You will 
appropriate the good by mere elective affinity, and 
reject the evil by a natural repulsion. 

Let us not indulge in the prevalent mistake of 
supposing that we are in so high a condition that 
we can partake of evil and not be harmed by it, or 
that we can partake of only a little evil and receive 
only a little harm. The injury we do ourselves 
and others by the least indulgence in evil is always 
incalculable ; and the very fact that the little evil 
is tolerable to us, proves that our condition is not 
high. 

It is the mingling of evil with good that works 
the greatest harm. It is the eating of the tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil that is death to 
spirituality. One who is living almost wholly in 
evil is not regarded with admiration by even those 
as benighted as himself. His example is not likely 
to do as much harm as that of one who mingles 
a little evil with much good. Where the good 
predominates, the whole is taken for good, by the 
ignorant. 

Let those especially who are in a conspicuous 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 131 

position in the world, not indulge in the little evil, 
the harmful effects of which tell, not only on 
themselves morally, mentally and physically, but, 
tell in the same way upon incalculable numbers of 
envious and admiring beholders. Let such per- 
sons make it their highest pleasure manifestly to 
draw the line between good and evil. 

There is a class of men, who are so blinded by 
their inordinate desires, that they are not able to 
discriminate between good and evil. It is so their 
habit to yield to the dictates of their lower nature 
that their higher nature has no chance to assert it- 
self. Their divine soul has become so incrusted 
over with materiality that it seems to have departed 
from them altogether. They have, for the time 
being, lost their spiritual discrimination. Their 
whole course is one grand mistaking of evil for 
good. If you were to assert to them that all is 
good, they would quite agree with you and they 
would think that they possessed that good in the 
gratification of self. Nothing could awaken them 
from their slumber in falsities, except that which 
comes to them sooner or later, that which their 
own condition brings upon them, viz., intense suf- 
fering. 



132 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

There is another class of men, who have partly 
awakened from their dangerous sleep. To these 
we would speak, for they can comprehend us. 
They desire to drop evil out of their lives, and en- 
deavor to do so just as fast as they learn what it 
is. They are ignorant and bewildered and con- 
found good and evil. To such we w r ould say, let 
this be your test ; the indulgence in any practice 
or the commission of any act that works harm to 
yourself or others, must be an evil. Evil no more 
comes out of good than corrupt fruit comes from 
a sound tree. 

If with specious arguments you are endeavoring 
to persuade yourself that a moderate use of intox- 
icating drink or tobacco, or any other undue stim- 
ulant, is a good instead of an evil, and, in looking 
around you searchingly, you find them working an 
injury to thousands, you will be convinced of your 
mistake, and you will wish to leave them entirely 
out of your life. 

By careful thought, even on the material plane, 
you will learn that whatever gives pleasure or 
comfort by inducing unnatural action or unnatural 
torpidity in the mind — which reflects itself in a 
similar bodily condition — works against the laws 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 133 

of our being and is therefore an evil. A tempor- 
ary comfort gained in this unnatural and therefore 
illegitimate way ends in discomfort. Temporary 
pleasure so gained, ends in misery. In the light 
of mere worldly policy it is only adding mortgage 
after mortgage to our estate it is only borrowing 
to repay with compound interest. iReal, true good 
is not exciting in its nature, neither is it deaden- 
ing It is always quickening; but in imparting 
life, it imparts peace and tranquility. The greatest 
powers do not work with an external commotion. 
When we employ anything but good to incite us 
to action, and push on our life thinking that we 
are thereby increasing out vitality, we are in reali- 
ty only decreasing it. 

If we give our best mental powers to the sub- 
ject, we learn that true spirituality, which is allow- 
ing our higher nature to take the lead — and it is 
always ready and willing to do so if we do not ob-\ 
trude our lower nature in its way — is the most 
rational, the most practical, and the most economi- 
cal plan of life of which the human mind is able to 
conceive. 

If it is practical and economical for the farmer 
to uoroot the tares from his field, lest they choke 



134 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

the grain, it is practical and economical for us to 
uproot the evil from our lives that the good may 
have a chance to grow. And as it is the farmer's 
first work to learn what, among his sprouting 
germs are tares and what are grain, so it should be 
our first work to learn to distinguish between evil 
and good. The wise farmer does not wait to lee 
his tares come to maturity in order to learn that 
they are useless or noxious, but as soon as he 
knows that their tendency is harmful rather than 
beneficial, instead of saying that he likes them and 
that a few of them will not do much harm, the 
mere knowledge that they are tares and not grain, 
is sufficient to induce him to uproot them every 
one. 

Why can not we work our spiritual fields in ac- 
cordance with the same practical and economical 
plan? 

If business men proceeded strictly in accordance 
with this plan, they would not ask themselves if a 
certain transaction or a certain course was legal, 
or customary among business men, but they would 
only endeavor to learn whether it was beneficial or 
harmful in its tendency. 

A man who has an inordinate desire for wealth 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 135 

or fame, is not in a condition to discriminate be- 
tween good and evil. The gratification of his rul- 
ing desire is his only good. He sees everything 
through the distorting medium of his self-hood. 
If he would see clearly, let him remove self from 
before his vision. Let him think of the good he 
can bestow upon others, instead of dwelling upon 
the good he can grasp for himself. A sudden 
turning of his mind away from evil and towards 
good, may, and doubtless will, for the moment, be 
as painful to him as the amputation of a decaying 
member of his body, but it will, in the end, prove 
equally salutary and economical. 

It is such a mistake to suppose that the good of 
this life is a contradiction of the good of our so- 
called future life. There is but one good, and it 
applies to our whole continued existence. All 
good is of the spirit, and only reflects itself in 
matter. I we would have our life in matter, the 
perfection ot a material life we must place it un- 
der the rule of the spirit which alone has access to 
good. Our conscience must be our gate-keeper- 
If we put out the eyes of our keeper or shut him 
up in the dark until he has lost his sight, he can- 
not guard our premises, and they will be exposed 



I36 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

to the inroad of encroaching evil-doers. We all 
have a conscience, but if we blind it by the indul- 
gence of selfish desires, it will not distinguish be- 
tween good and evil, and we shall be invaded by 
foes that have been mistaken for friends. 

How shall we cultivate our conscience, on whose 
faithful discharge of duty depends both our spirit- 
ual and material prosperity ? How shall we teach 
it to become so discriminating, so on the alert that 
no evil, however well it may counterfeit good, can 
come in upon us ? 

We can do so only by endeavoring to benefit 
others equally with ourselves, by studying the in- 
terest and welfare of others as we study our own 
interest and welfare. It is only by living up to the 
highest light we now possess that we can gain 
more light, and be enabled to distinguish evil from 
good. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE SCIENCE. 



A true science of life must apply to all conscious, 
living beings. A knowledge of the right mode of 
thinking and living, applies to all beings who con- 
sciously think and live, and it applies to them at 
all times, and in all places, and under all circum- 
stances. It applies to man, woman and child. It 
applies to infancy, youth and old age. Unlike any 
other science or knowledge, it has a bearing upon 
everything in life, upon every conceivable occupa- 
tion, and upon our pleasures as well as upon our 
duties. 

There is, among the ignorant, a mistaken idea 
that only those who lack bodily health need trouble 
themselves about this kind of knowledge. Of 
course those who lack bodily health, thereby reveal 

(137) 



I38 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

their lack of this kind of knowledge. But those, 
who at this moment seem to have bodily health, 
need the teachings of this science to enable them 
to maintain that health, to protect them against 
encroaching outside influences, and, above all, to 
enable them to correct their own errors to whose 
harmful effects they will otherwise sooner or later 
succumb. 

Then giving us bodily health is the work the 
science accomplishes on the very lowest plane. 
It is merely the indication that the higher and 
more interior work has already been effected. 
The science aims at the higher work and not at 
the lower. It aims at the greater work and not at 
the lesser, and in effecting the greater, which in- 
cludes the lesser, it must accomplish both. When 
we build a fire in our room it is to keep us warm, 
and not to raise the mercury in our thermometer, 
but it accomplishes both. 

A true spiritual science directs its efforts to spir- 
itual regeneration, and from the spiritual rebirth 
naturally results the physical rebirth or reforma- 
tion. So long as we fall short of perfection we 
need a spiritual rebirth. We all, without excep- 
tion, need more spiritual knowledge. We need 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 39 

not only to gain that knowledge, but to utilize it, 
and utilizing it is bringing it to bear upon every 
feeling, thought and act of our whole life. 

There are certain classes and societies of people, 
who are accomplishing great and noble work in 
some one line of thought, who, nevertheless, in 
their ignorance of its true nature, antagonize spir- 
itual science, instead of seeking it as a means 
whereby their power for good in any direction 
whatever might be increased a thousand fold. 

Any knowledge as well as any good intention 
in the way of philanthropy and reform is included 
in spiritual science, although it may be an infini- 
tesimal part of that science. If your design is evil 
you may consistently oppose spiritual science, for 
it will not aid you. It will not help you to take 
advantage of your neighbor, or to grasp what does 
not honestly belong to you, or in any way to live 
for your own selfish gratification. But if your de- 
sign is good, so far as it is good, just so far you 
have already accepted the truths of this science, 
whether you are conscious of the fact or not. But 
a consciousness of the fact and an endeavor to in- 
crease your knowledge, would increase your power 
for the special good you have in view. 



140 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

If, for example, you believe that the tests of 
spiritualism as offered in material phenomena 
help the world to a knowledge of the immortality 
of the soul, and of true spiritual life, why do you 
not also see that spiritual science can help you in 
this very work ? Why can you not perceive that 
it includes the teaching you are endeavoring to 
give? 

If you are working in the cause of temperance, 
why can you not understand, that the only radical 
and reliable reform in that respect, must be in the 
spirit and mind ? It must result from that very 
temperance and moderation of thought, that very 
spiritual control of the passions and appetites to 
which we are so lovingly assisted by spiritual 
science. If you were working to increase intem- 
perance you would be consistent in opposing this 
science, for it could not espouse your cause. But 
as you really desire good, your good, whatever it 
may be, is included in the science. 

If you are working to educate the young, and 
take an exaggerated view of the importance of the 
intellect, remember that the highest kind of edu- 
cating or unfolding is that to which we are led by 
spiritual science. It is a kind that develops our 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. I41 

highest powers, that unfolds both the intellect and 
the spirit, and by the very development of the 
spirit, renders even the intellect, which yon over- 
rate, still more capable than Lt could become under 
your one-sided unfoldment. If you were working 
to keep the world in ignorance, you would natural- 
ly antagonize this science, for it would be only a 
constant rebuke to you. But as you are seriously 
working for the spread of knowledge, you can do 
nothing wiser than to throw youself heart and soul 
into this science which will enable you to sow 
broadcast the very highest kind of knowledge. 

If your efforts are directed to the uplifting of 
woman, to the placing of woman on an equality 
with man, you, above all others, should be attract- 
ed to this divine science that recognizes no sex. 
If you think that suffrage is a means whereby 
woman will be protected and elevated, and man 
also refined and improved, you can do nothing 
more strengthening to your cause than to turn 
your attention to this science, which gives every 
human being a voice in the governing of his own 
life, as well as an influential voice in the govern- 
ing of all other lives into whose sphere he enters. 
It is a science whose whole tendency is to refine 



142 THE NEW BIOLOGY. 

and elevate, and it offers the only perfect freedom 
to all, # irrespective of race, color, creed or sex. 
For you to antagonize this science, would appear 
as if you were desirous to enslave woman and en- 
courage despotism in man. If you sincerely and 
wisely have at heart the cause you pretend to es- 
pouse, instead of opposing a willing ally, you will 
desire to join your forces to all that are working 
in the same direction as yourself. You will see 
that the most effective way to increase your own 
power is to recognize and adopt this science in 
which resides the very essence of power. You 
will perceive that the divine scheme of life includes 
the whole of your ainv, as one of its many parts ; 
and that all its parts have a bearing upon one an- 
other, and that each partakes of the quality of the 
whole, as a drop of the ocean partakes of the 
quality of the great body of water as a whole. 
You will learn that the science of life includes the 
whole of life, and therefore you cannot fail to find 
therein the small part to which you have directed 
your energies. 

Our one little aim, however good it may be, is 
only one atom of a great whole. Let us, as far as 
possible, come into a knowledge of that great 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 43 

whole. Let us learn that each good, however dis- 
tinct and supreme it may seem to us who have 
narrowed down our vision to its outlines, is yet 
only one of many kinds of good, and that all kinds 
are so related that they cannot reach full stature 
independent of one another. A knowledge of 
more good will give us a broader view of our own 
little good, and increase our usefulness in its pur- 
suance. 

Let us not fear that our little code of morality, 
or our little religious sect will be overthrown if we 
extend our knowledge of even possible truth. That 
which is not truth will not stand, though it may 
lead us nearer truth than we were before, as a dark 
passage way may conduct us to a light room. Do 
not let us fear to use our powers of discrimination 
in order to test any pretended truth, for if it is not 
worthy it will not bear a test. 

Let us first be perfectly sure that we have come 
into possession of this science of our interior life, 
then let us daily and hourly apply it, and we must 
apply it if we possess it. We shall then realize its 
truths to the extent of our ability to realize them, 
to the degree to which we are unfolded intellectu- 
ally and spiritually. We shall be able to see that 



T44 T HE NEW BIOLOGY. 

it has a fellowship with all that is noble and aspir- 
ing in even the most degraded of races and of in- 
dividuals. We shall realize its universality and 
our love and our charity will become so universal 
that they will include the whole of mankind. We 
shall realize its immensity and we also shall become 
great. In order to do great work we must become 
great ourselves. 

Although this science most certainly teaches us 
how to live in order to keep our material body in 
good condition, yet the teaching is not cast aside 
with the body. It is eternal truth. In gaining it 
we are laying up treasures where neither moth nor 
rust doth corrupt nor thieves break through and 
steal. 

In this material age much thought is devoted to 
making good investments of the money that comes 
into our possession. We feel so satisfied and 
secure when we have put it into something that 
we consider sure, something that cannot fail to 
bring us a due return, when the truth is that the 
very safest material investment one can possibly 
make is about as secure as a bubble in a tempest. 
There is nothing fixed, nothing unchangeable in 
the world of matter. 



THE NEW BIOLOGY. 1 45 

If, on the contrary, we invest all our best facul- 
ties, all our highest powers in the divine enter- 
prise that works only in the realm of spirit, we 
may well have a feeling of security. We have 
placed our wealth where there is no such thing as 
change. We have invested it where its interest is 
momentarily compounded, and where it is protect- 
ed by laws that are as fixed and eternal as the 
Infinite Being who has charge of it, and in whom 
there is no variableness, neither shadow of turn- 
ing. 

A knowledge of our spiritual nature and of the 
laws by which it is governed, once gained, can 
never depart from us. A truth that is once ours 
has become a part of our divine being, and can no 
more be detached from us than any other part of 
our immortal self. 

Let us strive to gain these everlasting riches, 
then shall we be rich indeed and in truth. 



Practical Metaphysics, 



By JVC. J. BARNETT, 



A CONCISE STATEMENT OF THE PRIN- 
CIPLES OF METAPHYSICS. 



This work, on account of its clearness of 
expression and its practical value, has been 
adopted as a text book in teaching the science 
of metaphysics or spiritual healing. It is recom- 
mended also to the sick and afflicted who have 
no access to teaching other than through litera- 
ture, and who find it, what it professes to be, 
the divine science of healing made practical. 



RETAIL PRICK, - $1.00. 



Sent by Mail, Post-paid, on Receipt of Retail Price. 



HEALTH FOR TEACHERS. 



BY 

Nf. J. BARNETT, 
author of 

Practical Metaphysics, &c. 



BOSTON : 

H. H. CARTER & KARRICK, 

3 Beacon Street, 

1888. 



JUSTICE 
A HEALING POWER. 



BY 

M. J. BARNETT, 

AUTHOR OF 

"Practical Metaphysics, or The True Method of 
Healing," u Health for Teachers," etc. 



BOSTON : 
H. CARTER & KARRICK, 
3 Beacon Street, 

1888. 



MENTAL MEDICINE: 

A THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MEDICAL 
PSYCHOLOGY. 

By W. F. EVANS. 

This book contains a full exposition of the nature and 
laws of Magnetism, and its application to the cure of dis- 
ease. _______ 

Extra Cloth. 216 pp. Retail Price, $1.25. 



[3F Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of retail price. 

SOUL AND BODY; 

OR, 

THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCE OF HEALTH AND DISEASE. 

By W. F. EVANS. 



Extra ClottL. 147 pp. Retail Price, $1.00. 



Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of retail price. 



All the above works of Dr. Evans are on the relation of 
Mind and Body, and the cure of disease in ourselves and 
others by the mental method, and are the only publications 
on the subject that commend themselves to men of science 
and to thinking people everywhere. 



THE WORKS 



OP 



DR. W. F. EVANS. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE MIND ON THE BODY IN 

HEALTH OR DISEASE, AND THE MENTAL 

METHOD OF TREATMENT 



'On earth, there is nothing great but Man: 
In Man there is nothing great but Mind." 



PUBLISHED BY 

H. H. CARTER & KARRICK, 

3 Beacon Street, Boston. 
1886. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

By W. F. EVANS. 

A Standard Work on the Philosophy and Practice of 

the Mind Cure, a Reliable Text-Book in all 

the Schools of Mental Healing. 



No work has ever been written of more practical value 
to physicians of all schools. The book is the result of the 
extensive learning and research of the author and exhibits 
a familiarity with the literature of the subject. It is pro- 
foundly religious without being offensively dogmatic. It 
has been received with universal favor by all who are 
seeking light on the subject on which it treats — the cure 
of disease in ourselves and others by mental and spiritual 
agencies. 



Extra Cloth. 302 pp. Retail price, $1.50. 



Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of retail price. 



THE PRIMITIVE MIND CURE 



The Nature and Power of Faith; 

OR, 

ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND 
TRANSCENDENTAL MEDICINE. 

By W. F. EVANS, 
Author of u Divine Law of Cure," etc. 



This work is a complete exposition of the principles under- 
lying the system of mental healing. It contains a full course 
of instruction in the philosophy and practice of the Mind 
Cure. It is the most complete treatise on Christian The- 
osophy, in its application to the cure of both soul and body 
that was ever published. It has elevated the subject into 
the dignity of a fixed spiritual science. 



Extra Cloth.. 225 pp. Retail Price, $1.50. 



BP Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of retail price. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





DDDESTfiflETE 



III 







lH * « 

Ws 11111 -jw 



ill II 




